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Free Trade Quotes

Browse 196 quotes about Free Trade.

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Free Trade Quotes

“The essential difference between rich societies and poor societies does not stem from any greater effort the former devote to work, nor even from any greater technological knowledge the former hold. Instead it arises mainly from the fact that rich nations possess a more extensive network of capital goods wisely invested from an entrepreneurial standpoint. These goods consists of machines, tools, computers, buildings, semi-manufactured goods, software, etc., and they exist due to prior savings of the nation's citizens. In other words, comparatively rich societies possess more wealth because they have more time accumulated in the form of capital goods, which places them closer in time to the achievement of much more valuable goals.”

FreedomLibertyPovertyCapitalismEconomicsLibertarianAnarchyFree MarketPrivate PropertyFree TradeVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of Economics
Author:Jesús Huerta de Soto
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“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”

GovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyLibertarianCommunismAnarchyIndividualismAggressionCoercionCollectivismFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of EconomicsNapFree MarketsSelf OwnershipInitiation Of ForceVoluntaryist
Book:A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics
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“There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.”

GovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyCapitalismLibertarianTyrannyCommunismControlTaxationTheftFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleSubjugationFreaksFree MarketsRegulationsInitiation Of Force
Author:Ayn Rand
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“The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially true of sexual orientation. It is the market that rewards people who put aside their biases and seek gains through trade. This is why states devoted to racialist and hateful policies always resort to violence in control of the marketplace.”

GovernmentEvilFreedomLibertyRacismLibertarianToleranceSocialismAnarchyAssociationFree MarketCoercionLawsFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismMarketsLaissez FaireAncapAnarcho CapitalismAnti RacismAustrian School Of EconomicsRegulations
Author:Jeffrey Tucker
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“The government enforces a monopoly over the production and distribution of its alleged 'services' and brings violence to bear against would-be competitors. In so doing, it reveals the fraud at the heart of its impudent claims and gives sufficient proof that it is not a genuine protector, but a mere protection racket.”

ForceFreedomLibertyLibertarianSocialismAnarchyFree MarketCoercionCollectivismStateFree TradeStatismPublicVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of EconomicsNap
Author:Robert Higgs
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“While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.”

GovernmentForceFreedomLibertyViolenceLibertarianSocialismLiberalismAnarchyFree MarketTheftCoercionFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireInitiationNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of EconomicsNapAustrian Economics
Author:Murray N. Rothbard
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“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”

CapitalismCommunismExploitationFree TradeBourgeoisieEvils Of Capitalism
Book:The Communist Manifesto
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“President Trump displays less finesse than a bull in a china shop. Just as Prime Minister May managed - after many months of bitter wrangling - to reach a degree of consensus on what Britain's future relationship with the EU should look like, in comes the marauding beast upending all the finely balanced Wedgwood. Britain may well need some form of future trade deal with the US but it certainly isn't one that should be struck with the co-author of a lame business book more appropriately named 'Art of the Steal'.”

Politics QuotesInternational RelationsEuropean UnionFree TradeDonald TrumpBrexitUkBritish PoliticsSpecial RelationshipAmerica First
Book:Lines & Lenses
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“If it's okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn't we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don't think that's a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don't think it's a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born.”

MoralityEconomicsXenophobiaFree Trade
Author:Steven E. Landsburg
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“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”

CapitalismFree TradeSocial RevolutionComunism
Book:On the Question of Free Trade
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“If you have free trade and free circulation of capital and people but destroy the social state and all forms of progressive taxation, the temptations of defensive nationalism and identity politics will very likely grow stronger than ever in both Europe and the United States. Note, finally, that the less developed countries will be among the primary beneficiaries of a more just and transparent international tax system.”

TaxesTaxationGlobal EconomyFree TradePiketty
Book:Capital in the Twenty First Century
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“The upper middle class and the economic right, who had favored the coup, were euphoric. At first they were a little shocked when they saw the consequences of their action; they had never lived in a dictatorship and did not know what it was like. They thought the loss of democratic freedoms would be temporary and that it was possible to go without individual or collective rights for a while so long as the regime respected the tenets of free enterprise.”

DictatorshipFree TradeClass Struggle
Book:The House of the Spirits
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“The old imperialism had the ‘advantage’ that the leading metropolitan power of the time, Britain, could keep its economy open to the goods of the then newly-industrializing countries, without getting indebted (on the contrary it became the largest capital exporter in the years before the First World War). For at least four decades up to 1928, India had the second largest export surplus in the world (second only to the USA); and this despite the imports of goods that caused domestic de-industrialization. But this export surplus was entirely appropriated by Britain not only to pay for its current account deficit with continental Europe, North America and regions of recent European settlement, but also to allow it to export capital to these regions.”

CapitalismIndiaColonialismImperialismFree TradeBritish Colonialism
Book:The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
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“Page 61-2 ... Rome expanded rapidly ... and became master over the entire Mediterranean Basin. It then had unlimited resources in terms of land, money, and slaves. It collected taxes or tribute throughout its empire and was able to transfer to the central capital massive quantities of foodstuffs and manufactured items. The peasants and the artisans of Italy saw their economic base disappear as this Mediterranean economy was "globalized" by the political domination of Rome. The society was polarized between, on the one hand, a mass of economically useless plebeians and, on the other, a predatory plutocracy. A minority gorged with wealth oversaw the remaining proletarianized population. The middle-classes collapsed, a process that brought about the end of the republic and the beginning of the political form known as "empire" in conformity with the observations made by Aristotle about the importance of intermediate social classes for the stability of political systems. Since one could not eliminate the plebeians, intractable but geographically central as they were, they came to be nourished and distracted at the empire's expense with "bread and circuses." Page 64-5: The positive American trade balance, when only "advanced technology" is counted, dropped from 35 billion dollars in 1990 to 5 billion in 2001 and had disappeared entirely to become one more element in the overall trade deficit in January 2002. This fall in economic strength is not compensated for by the activities of American-based multinationals. Since 1998 the profits that they bring back into the country amount to less than what foreign companies that have set up shop in the United States are taking back to their own countries. Page 68: In conformity with classical economic theory, the general opening up of commercial exchange has brought about an increase in inequality throughout the world. This general exchange tends to introduce into each country the same disparities in revenue that exist at the level of the whole planet. ... The compression of worker revenues caused by free trade revives the traditional dilemma of capitalism that has now spread across the globe: low salaries do not allow for the absorption of increases in production. Page 17: In developed countries a new class is emerging that comprises roughly 20 percent of the population in terms of sheer numbers but controls about half of each nation's wealth. This new class has more and more trouble putting up with the constraint of universal suffrage.”

DemocracyImmigrationGlobalizationFree Trade
Book:After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order
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“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes, and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within two hundred years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.”

Free TradeEconomic DevelopmentProtectionism
Author:Ulysses S. Grant
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“Dr. Wickramsinghe, I don't mean to insult, but what do we have in Sri Lanka? We have a small island nation the size of what, Belgium, that has been at war with itself since 1983. A sixteen-year civil war which shows no signs of abating. A tiny poor nation. What do you possibly have to offer anyone besides warmed-over wage slaves and more of the same?" ..."Listen, we support development. But there are some serious problems with the Sri Lankan way of life. I can assure you that there will be no entry into the WTO for Sri Lanka, nor any free trade agreements with the U.S., unless you enact some serious reforms. Tighten your fucking belt. I believe we have made it very clear that your grossly overfunded health and education will have to go.”

DevelopmentFree TradeWto
Book:Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist
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“Page 199: According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Statistics, more than 20 percent of all imports to the United States come from foreign subsidiaries or affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. … This is why American business is so adamantly opposed to tariffs—not fear of foreign retaliation, but fear of tariffs on products from American-owned industrial plantations.”

Free TradeTariffs
Book:The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution
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“Page 200: This school of thought might be called “free trade plus.” The United States will benefit from global free trade, these liberals argue, as long as the skills and productivity of American workers are upgraded. Higher skills translate into higher productivity, which will in turn translate into higher wages. Here a good theory falls victim to an evil fact: productivity has been going up in America, without resulting wage gains for American workers. The average productivity of American workers increased by more than 30 percent between 1977 and 1992, while the average real wage fell by 13 percent.”

Free Trade
Book:The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution
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“Page 204: In an 1848 address, he (Karl Marx) observed: "Generally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a work, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade." … the neo-fascist right is more likely than the cosmopolitan left to benefit from erosion of living standards by free-market globalism. Laissez-faire globalism may breed its own nemesis, in the form of the most radical and destructive kinds of ethnic nationalism and economic statism.”

Free Trade
Book:The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution
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“Quoting page 99-101: The opening of unregulated foreign trade causes a general shift of production and jobs to the low-wage nations. They experience a rapid rise in production of advanced goods and in the availability of skill-developing and high-paid jobs, rapidly build new factories, and experience a rapid upgrading in their jobs, economic capabilities, and income. The other side of these benefits to the low-income nations is the corresponding damage to the high-income nations, that are losing the industries and jobs that these nations are gaining. The high-income nations experience an excess of imports over exports, a decline in production of advanced goods and in the availability of skill-developing and high-paid jobs, suffer a decline and obsolescence in their industrial plant, and a downgrading in their available jobs, economic capabilities, and income. This pattern of trade is anomalous not only because it calls on the high-income nations to acquiesce in their own economic decline, but because it points toward a world-wide failure or collapse. The low-income nations are betting their futures on continued increases in sales of advanced goods in the markets of the high-income nations--but these markets are being undermined by the economic decline of the high-income nations. If the low-income nations have a very large population, and especially if any of the nations in the unregulated-trade group have rapid rates of population-growth, the end result of the process will be that there will be no high-income nations anywhere and no substantial market for advanced goods. In the end, all nations are dragged down. The rise in the low-income nations cannot be extrapolated into the future, for it destroys the conditions by which it is temporarily supported. ... The final effects on the standard of living of the high-income nation of unregulated foreign trade are similar to the effects of its permitting unlimited immigration. The shifting of the jobs to the low-wage nation has the same effects as the shifting of excessive numbers of workers to the high-wage nation.”

GlobalizationFree TradeEconomic Nationalism
Book:The Trade Threat and the U.S. Trade Policy
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“[The right-wing populist] narrative centres around division: dividing the world into the virtuous and non-virtuous. Convincing an electoral majority that they are among the virtuous, and that the non-virtuous - that is, free trade, China, migrants and refugees, and those who would impose meaningful action on climate change - need to be dealt with via tough policies. This right-wing populism turbocharges identity and grievance politics and weaponises it through the amplifying support of both social media and elements of the traditional mainstream media. (p.20-21)”

Climate ChangeChinaSocial MediaRefugeesFree TradeMigrantsMainstream MediaIdentity PoliticsRight Wing PopulismGrievance Politics
Book:On Charlatans
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“Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything – not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing – the same way again.”

GovernmentPoliticsFreedomLibertyCapitalismEconomicsLibertarianAnarchyFreeFree MarketCoercionFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismMarketsNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of Economics
Author:Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
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“In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state’s power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear that the welfare state is an evil the same as every restriction of freedom.”

FreedomLibertyCapitalismEconomicsCharityLibertarianSocialismCommunismWelfareFascismTaxationCoercionCollectivismFree TradeStatismLaissez FaireAustrian School Of EconomicsFree MarketsAustrian Economics
Author:Wilhelm Röpke
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“[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don't stick to trade…they colonize environmental labor, and consumer issues of grave concern (in terms of health safety, and livelihoods too) to many, many hundreds of millions of people - and they do that by subordinating consumer, environmental, and labor issues to the imperatives and the supremacy of international commerce. That is exactly the reverse of how democratic societies have progressed, because over the decades they've progressed by subordinating the profiteering priorities of companies to, say, higher environmental health standards; abolition of child labor; the right of workers to have fair worker standards…and it's this subordination of these three major categories that affect people's lives, labor, environment, the consumer, to the supremacy and domination of trade; where instead of trade getting on its knees and showing that it doesn't harm consumers - it doesn't deprive the important pharmaceuticals because of drug company monopolies, it doesn't damage the air and water and soil and food (environmentally), and it doesn't lacerate the rights of workers - no, it's just the opposite: it's workers and consumers and environments that have to kneel before this giant pedestal of commercial trade and prove that they are not, in a whole variety of ways, impeding international commerce…so this is the road to dictatorial devolution of democratic societies: because these trade agreements have the force of law, they've got enforcement teeth, and they bypass national courts, national regulatory agencies, in ways that really reflect a massive, silent, mega-corporate coup d'etat…that was pulled off in the mid-1990's.”

GovernmentPoliticsRichGeniusCapitalismIntelligentDemocraticCorruptionTerrorismBrilliantSocialismReformCommunismCorporationsProgressiveFascismDictatorTransparencyGoreFree TradeObamaInefficiencyProtectionismWashingtonLincolnGreen PartyBushJeffersonCorporatocracyCoup D EtatRalph NaderAnti Free TradeNader
Author:Ralph Nader
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“Commerce tends toward rewarding inclusion, broadness, and liberality. Tribal loyalties, ethnic and religious bigotries, and irrational prejudices are bad for business. The merchant class has been conventionally distrusted by tribalist leaders -- from the ancient to the modern world -- precisely because merchantcraft tends to break down barriers between groups.”

GovernmentPeaceFreedomLibertyLibertarianTyrannySocialismAnarchyFree MarketCoercionCollectivismFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of Economics
Author:Jeffrey Tucker
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“The free market is not a system. It is not a policy dictated by anyone in particular. It is not something that Washington implements. It does not exist in any legislation, law, bill, regulation, or book. It is what you get when people act on their own, entirely without central direction, and with their own property, and within human associations of their own creation and in their own interest. It is the beauty that emerges in absence of control.”

FreedomLibertyCapitalismLibertarianCooperationAnarchyFree TradeVoluntaryismLaissez FaireAncapAnarcho Capitalism
Author:Jeffrey Tucker
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“Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth”

EconomicsFree TradeFree Trade History
Book:Globalization and the Myths of Free Trade: History, Theory and Empirical Evidence
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“The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?”

ThinkingMenMadeIdeasSelfGovernmentPoliticalEnemyPrinciplesEconomyImpossibleKingsProveEssentialsArgumentLaborTradeSlaveBonesDisappearFinanceDestroyedChiefsContradictionFlatsPopeSubmissionMonopolyAdviseDespotismAbolishThink Of MeContentionFree TradeTradersOligarchySelf-governmentTariffsPolitical EconomyUsuryLabor And Capital
Author:Ezra Heywood
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