Free Trade & Trade Policy

Repeal the Minimum Wage

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 1996

To put it bluntly, given all the evidence we have about the destructive effects of the minimum wage law, anyone who still calls for an increase in it is either sadly lacking in economic education or is a demagogue. There's just no getting around the fact that if you use the ...

Geniuses from Abroad

by George Gilder April 1, 1996

The current immigration debate founders on ignorance of one huge fact: Without immigration, the U.S. would not exist as a world power. Without immigration, the U.S. could not have produced the computerized weapons that induced the Soviet Union to surrender in the arms race. Without immigration, the U.S. could not have built the atomic bomb ...

Close the Newport–Costa Mesa Border

by Don Hull April 1, 1996

They're coming by the carload! Immigrants from Newport Beach, California, who cross our Costa Mesa, California, border with impunity, take our jobs, eat our food, drink our liquor, and marry our women. Every day I see it. Mercedeses, Acuras, Rollses, BMWs, and Lexus crossing the border into Costa Mesa where they come ...

The Commerce Clause: Route to Omnipotent Government

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1995

In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed a law forbidding possession of a firearm within 1,000 feet of any school. The Gun-Free School Zones Act was touted as a blow on behalf of education and against violence among children. Two years later, Alfonso Lopez Jr., a 12th-grader at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, carried a concealed .38-caliber pistol ...

Farming on Our Own

by Deanna Dyksterhuis July 1, 1995

My husband Jerry and I are farmers in Corvallis, Oregon. We started with ten acres of strawberries on rented ground in 1961. We now own and farm 1,500 acres of riverbottom land along the Willamette River. We have grown green beans, carrots, cauliflower, table beets, black-berries, alfalfa, barley, sweet corn, ...

As Capitalism Wins, the U.S. Drops Out

by Theodore J. Forstmann March 1, 1995

American political and economic life has entered a twilight zone. As countries everywhere are embracing capitalism, the United States, unfortunately, is moving toward democratic socialism. As I travel the world, the irony could not be more profound. I've been to Mexico to talk about free-market reform, to Russia and Eastern Europe — to meet with young entrepreneurs, and all over ...

The New, New Left

by Rev. Robert A. Sirico December 1, 1994

The anticapitalist Left has devised a new intellectual attack on the market economy. The straw in the wind was a blistering article in The New York Times that appeared on May 8, 1994. The article, written by Peter Passell, was headlined "Life's Hard? Blame the Market." Like other attacks on market fundamentals, it complains about unequal income distribution. ...

The Case for Unilateral Free Trade and Open Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 1994

The American people are extremely fortunate. Two hundred years ago, their Founding Fathers used the Constitution to prohibit American government officials from ever enacting trade and immigration restrictions between the respective states of the Union. This meant that the citizens of any state could buy and sell goods and services with the citizens of any other state, without tariffs ...

Clinton, Castro, and Cuba

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 1994

August 19, 1994, will go down as a black day in the history of the United States. On that day, President William Jefferson Clinton began jailing Cuban refugees in an American concentration center on the American side of Cuba. It was the first time since the Cuban revolution in 1959 that ...

The Forgotten Argument for Free Trade

by Samuel Bostaph October 1, 1994

Like most public policy debates in the United States of the Bush-Clinton era, the debates preceding congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) consisted mostly of extensive public wrangling over who might gain and who might lose if NAFTA passed. Self-proclaimed champions for various special-interest groups debated the job-creating versus job-destroying potential of the agreement, the implications ...

The United States: A Protectionist Nation

by James Bovard October 1, 1994

In talking about trade, many politicians rely on the Big Lie — the simple assertion that America is the most open market in the world, and, therefore, that any criticisms of our existing trade policies for being protectionist are absurd. But sifting through the details of trade policy can provide insight — and entertainment. One of the best ways ...

The Immorality of Protectionism

by James Bovard September 1, 1994

The tariff is the protection the wolf gave the lamb. —Rep. James Beck, 1882 Protectionism produces political corruption, economic stagnation, and international conflict. Yet, many people will insist that even though protectionism hinders a nation's ability to feed, clothe, and house itself, the moral gains from protectionism are greater than the economic losses. But what is the moral core ...