Townsend Harris Quotes

We cannot open our markets to countries that do not open their markets to us.

Governments should not meddle with these trade issues… if we believe in free markets, then they have to be free

A liberal economy doesn’t mean opening wide the doors for imports.

The best way to help countries around the world is to help them with trade.

Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient.

In 200 years when the United States will get all that it can from protectionism, it too will adopt free trade.

Demanding freedom of access to other markets isn't protectionism, it's free trade.

We need some economists to say that [trade] protectionism is not as dangerous as most economists seem to think it is.

More and more we must build our foreign policy around commerce.

You cannot close down free trade. What you've got to do is open up markets.

I denounce the policy of protection as bondage.

The countries that stand to benefit most from greater competition and openness are those nations that display the highest protection.

Free trade economists have to explain how free trade can be an explanation for the economic success of today’s rich countries, when it simply had not been practiced very much before they became rich.

Those who whine incessantly and maintain the romantic notion of a self-contained market speak against the interests of American workers and a growing standard of living. They are trafficking in fear and promoting ignorance while advancing their own political ambitions. No great nation has ever increased its worth over time by closing its markets. In fact, history is replete with examples of closed markets leading to destructive economic consequences.

It must become a nation of free traders, which would throw open its ports to the world, and prove to European nations that the colonial system of restriction and monopoly was founded on delusion

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

The benefits of trade diffuse across the economy, but the cost of trade are concentrated.

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

I agree with President Trump that we should have an America First trade policy.

But now that foreign steel, and foreign cars, are moving into the United States in increased quantities at relatively low prices, the United States can no longer keep its business system fluid by inflation.

Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of world government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright, shining lie.

The United States can't keep a completely open system if the rest of the world is less open. The United States may have to take a leaf out of the book of Japan, China, and Germany, and have protectionism inside the system.

Let me say at the outset that I do not reflexively oppose international trade.

If the United States wants access to Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese markets, we must get access to theirs. U.S. protectionism is very subtle but it is very much there.

While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.