Joseph Hume Quotes

American consumers benefit from free trade and investment.

The idea that free trade encourages global economic growth by enhancing productivity is taken as an article of faith by the three major schools of international political economy: liberalism, Marxism, and mercantilism

If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions.

The important desideratum is freedom of the market; a country or region will often best develop, depending on conditions of resources or the market, by concentrating on one or two items and then exchanging them for other items produced elsewhere.

It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high.

In the broad and sweeping sense which the use of the term generally implies, I am not a free-trader.

I debated free trade in college. I came out as a free trader. I'm a free markets guy. I'm an Adam Smith guy.

Free trade is a two way street.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice

If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

Free trade is fundamentally a religious belief of its supporters.

[Foreign] Trade is necessary to modern comfort and prosperity.

Most of the expressions we use in economics are relative terms. All of us are votaries of free trade.

It cannot be denied that a state of great national prosperity is quite consistent and compatible with legislation in favor of the protection of native industry. That proposition, years ago, was denied; but with the experience we have had of France and the United States of America—the two most flourishing communities probably in existence—it is now incontestable.

Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then onward opposed to its removal.

Sugar protectionism is government planning, It is industrial policy—government picking winners and losers—applied to agriculture.

Free trade ideas often look great in prospect but less in retrospect.

The law of supply and demand holds eternal.

The prosperity created at home and overseas by free expansion [of foreign trade] was infinitely greater than could be coaxed by restrictive mercantilism.

Each Country have their peculiar most suitable Productions; and likewise that different Men have Genius's adapted to Variety of different Arts and Manufactures, Therefore Commerce, or the Exchange of one Commodity or Manufacture for another, is highly convenient and beneficial to Mankind

Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

Trump will fail even in his proclaimed goal of reducing the trade deficit, which is determined by the disparity between domestic savings and investment.

If China wants to spend $10 producing a product and sell it for a buck, who benefits from that? I think we do. I'm the free market guy. I think free markets work.

What nobody wants to discuss is whether or not the black-and-white argument about trade - you're either a free trader or you're a protectionist - is the right one. It's the old 19th century argument.

Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.