A Nonexistent Quote About Free Trade

I fear we have to admit it: there is not a single truly free country among the 200 or so that occupy this planet. If there were one, we would have expected a representative of its state to declare publicly, about the current trade war, something like the following—let me put it in blockquote even if it is not an actual quote but a virtual one from an inexistent official:

Whatever others do, our government has decided to eliminate the last vestiges of tariffs and coercive barriers to trade. The citizens and residents of this country are free individuals who may trade with anybody—in the next village, the next country, or at the farthest reaches of the earth—who is willing and able to trade with them. Only a few restrictions exist, such as trade in stolen goods, the slave trade, hiring killers-for-hire, buying copper, and such. (Pardon my dark humor designed to lighten up these difficult times, but the last example in my list is, of course, a joke.) Anybody or any non-violent organization in the world who wishes to buy from, or sell to, the free men and women here, associated in firms or not, is welcome to try. Whether the sum of their trades results in a trade deficit or a trade surplus, more foreign investment or less, a higher or lower production of dolls, deodorant, or watermelons in some places, is really no busybody’s business. In our country, each person and private group minds its own business in a spirit of reciprocity; so does the government. Thanks to price signals and entrepreneurs, free markets adapt to desires for prosperity more efficiently than controlling and bullying politicians. Besides three centuries of economic analysis, history testifies to that.

Perhaps only one man in the last hundred years who could have said that: John Cowperthwaite, British administrator of Hong Kong between 1945 and 1971. The consequences were remarkable. (See my EconLog post, “Hong Kong and John Cowperthwaite.”)

I would add that, even with the blessing of electoral majorities, imitating what tyrants do to their subjects is not a recipe for liberty. An example is the Chinese state prohibiting its subjects who are dual citizens and therefore not captive dependents from leaving “their” national territory once they are caught there (see “U.S. Citizen Who Works for Commerce Dept. Ensnared in Chinese Exit Ban,” Washington Post, July 20, 2025). Should the U.S. government retaliate and promulgate the same ban in America? Ditto for trade.

This does not mean that there doesn’t exist countries that are freer or less unfree, of course. Note however that, except when we move close to the extremes, countries are not always easy to distinguish and classify on that scale, if only because freedom has many aspects, areas, or dimensions. These aspects occupy different positions in the preferences of different individuals. What seems clear is that free exchange between individuals is a paradigmatic feature of a free society. The reality is complex, but the ideal to pursue is not ambiguous.

It should not be forgotten either that some equilibria are not dynamically stable: a small move away from “more free” may well lead to a widening divergence from liberty. State intervention begets state intervention. Isn’t that happening today?