Those who proclaim that Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong can safely be ignored. They’re not motivated by a dispassionate longing for truth but by blind faith or vague gut feeling. But how about economists who proclaim that free trade isn’t beneficial? In this essay, Paul Krugman argues that they’re not that different from creationists. It’s from 1996 but even more relevant now.
No matter what economists do, we can be sure that ten years from now the talk shows and the op-ed pages will still be full of men and women who regard themselves as experts on the global economy, but do not know or want to know about comparative advantage.
Nehaveigur 
2 responses to “Free Trade”
[…] An alternative explanation is that people have arrived at favoring right-wing policies after having carefully considered the evidence. The neoliberal consensus has failed, and right-wing policies now appear favorable in comparison. There may be some truth in this, but I don’t think it’s fully convincing either since the right wing espouses too many positions that are simply wrong, such as on free trade. […]
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[…] post on tariffs. Fringe views, like tariffs being beneficial, sometimes turn out to be correct, but most of the time they’re wrong. I’d extend this view to the Trump presidency as a whole: there’s a chance that […]
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