7 Steps Toward a More Sensible Foreign Policy

For the sake of peace and prosperity in the world, the US should take the true leadership role in proving to the world that free trade and non-interventionism are all that is required. In other words, all nations should simply mind their own business and set good examples. Just as laissez faire policies work within a nation’s boundaries, free cooperation between individuals of different nations will quickly reveal which policies work and which do not. It is important to remember that there is nothing that a nation can do internally to force other nations to subsidize its economy. All subsidies, currency manipulations, etc. are self-defeating. Therefore, the US should take the following actions to remove government interference with peaceful, cooperative trade between its citizens and the citizens of other nations.
One: Adopt unilateral free trade. Completely eliminate all restrictions on the importation and export of legal products. For trade purposes treat the rest of the world as if it were part of one’s own country; i.e., the freedom to buy and sell all legal products anywhere in the world. It is a mercantilist fallacy that a nation becomes wealthy by selling more than it imports, thereby accumulating gold (or, nowadays, a “trade surplus” ). On the contrary, mercantilist nations deny their citizens the right to become wealthy. They do not allow their citizens to exchange the product of their labor for the most goods and services. Rather they deny their citizens a higher standard of living by forcing them to purchase higher priced and/or lower quality domestic goods. If this were not the case – i.e., if a nation could produce all things that it needed at the lowest worldwide price – trade barriers would not be needed, since no one would wish to purchase inferior/higher priced foreign goods. Of course, this is not the case at all. The division of labor is a natural, beneficial process that knows no international, political boundaries. If Hawaii were not a state of the union, but rather a foreign nation under its own political system, would Americans be better off by denying themselves Hawaiian grown pineapples and instead grow inferior pineapples at higher prices somewhere in the remaining forty-nine states? Of course not. Free trade allows for the most efficient allocation of worldwide capital to produce the most goods and services for those who participate.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on March 13, 2017.