Free Trade vs. Tariffs: A Reasoned Analysis

The debate over Free Trade* vs. Tariffs is one of those issues that combines monetary and ideological interests and is therefore prone to inflaming opinions beyond reason. These issues affect people’s bank accounts and their egos. People talk about them in shorthand phrases such as Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, David Ricardo, Smoot-Hawley as a way of saying, I don’t know enough about tariffs to argue the pros and cons intelligently, so I’ll throw some buzzwords and ‘appeals to authority’ around and hope they sound convincing. My purpose is to bring about a reasoned understanding of the Free Trade vs. Tariffs debate by exploring its historical roots and evolution to the present.