Edith Wharton Quotes

Protectionism is a very real danger. It is understandable that in times of a severe downturn protectionist pressures mount but the lessons of history are clear. If we give in to protectionist pressures, we will only send the world into a downward spiral.

Long before we wake up from our dream of prosperity through an inflated currency, our gold … will have vanished and no rate of interest will tempt it to return.

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

Protectionism is the ally of isolationism, and isolationism is the Dracula of American foreign policy.

For the past quarter of a century, the predominant idea, which has successfully asserted itself at the polls and shaped the course of the government, has been to preserve the home market for the home industries. The employer and the workman have alike been taught to look at the various economical measures proposed from this point of view, to regard with hostility any step favoring the intrusion of the foreign producer upon their own domain, and rather to demand increasingly rigorous measures of exclusion than to acquiesce in any loosening of the chain that binds the consumer to them.

We want to make our own Netherlands, to close our borders and to keep all that money that we give to the foreigners, there is billions, to Africa for development, to Brussels, to Greece, to asylum seekers in the Netherlands, we will stop that and give all that money to the Dutch people living in the Netherlands.

When I see stimulus money being used to attack American companies and American workers, I think it would be very unsettling to be working on the assembly line of Coca Cola, look up, and see an ad that's trying to hurt the very job that you make your wages and pay taxes from.

There's a natural antipathy on the part of the voters to a continuation of globalization as we know it. It's simply a code word today for bad trade deals that disadvantage the American people.

There's a sense of entitlement and isolationism that I think is really dangerous, and the way globalization and technology have been used isn't really for the best.

We will end the politics of profit. We will end the rule of special interests. We will end the raiding of our jobs by other countries. We will end the total disenfranchisement of the American voter and the American worker.

I worry about protectionists, which is another way of saying less competition, less trade around the world. And I view those as twins of negativity.

It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.

Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.

When paper money systems begin to crack at the seams, the run to gold could be explosive.

Globalization has become an ideology with no constraints. And now, nations are forcing themselves back into the debate. Nations with borders we control, with people that we listen to, with real economies, not Wall Street economies, but rather factories and farmers. And this goes against this unregulated globalization, wild, savage globalization.

[Donald Trump rhetoric]this is a common rhetorical line used by people who are against free trade that say, we're in favor of trade; we just don't like any of the free trade deals that America has actually signed onto.

As the touchstone tries gold, so gold tries men.

It's amazing how fast gold works.

The notion that somehow through a trade war or protectionism or magical thinking that we're going to return to a romanticized economic past is, in the end, going to be an illusion. And a severe disappointment to millions of decent, hard-working people.

In America, we are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. They are taking our companies, they are taking our jobs, and our politicians, many of whom are stupid and many of whom are corrupt, are allowing it to happen. We're not going to allow it any longer.

I believe Sharia law, however it comes, is the future for America. I believe, one day, that the people will adopt it anyway. A lot of issues we're looking at now are already enshrined within the Sharia. For instance, the gold standard for when dealing with inflation and a lack of confidence with the stocks and shares, which has been prevalent for the last many decades. All of that is prohibited in Islam.

Most paper money initially existed as a substitute for gold. That's what gave it value. But right now what gives a currency value is other currency. Most countries hold reserves and the reserves are other currencies. If you are a backing up the euro with the dollar, what's backing up the dollar? I don't think it is going to go to a point where all you have is coins and bars of gold, but I do think that we are going to have to go back to a monetary system based in gold, not based on paper.

Truth, like gold, is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine.