Jon Huntsman Jr. Quotes

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.

The thing that we have to worry about is this protectionist movement that has reared its head again in this country

There are some who want to move us back to the days when we were protectionists and keep all goods off our shores.

If Texas and Kansas were countries they wouldn't be admitted to the World Trade Organization. Their policies are congruent with North Korea, Somalia, Turkestan, several other countries I can't pronounce and Micronesia.

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.

I'm not talking about autarky. I'm not crazy. We need an intelligent protectionism.

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

In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

[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.

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.

Protectionism is the fool's gold of American politics.

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

Were our narrow and malignant politics [protectionism] to meet with success, we should reduce all our neighboring nations to the same state of sloth and ignorance that prevails in Morocco and the coast of Barbary.

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

It is difficult to overcome protectionism when times are bad.

Trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ...We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all used temporarily targeted tariffs on specific industries.

Protectionism is something that will hurt everybody, but especially the United States.

Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.

I want to go get trade agreements because if America walls itself up, if we address sort of an economic fortress America, we will lose.

We can do a much better job free of protectionist Europeans.

Nationalism makes us poor because its Siamese twin, protectionism, will destroy the internal market and disrupt international trade.

Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation.

We wake up to find the whole world building competitive trade barriers, just as we found it a few years ago building competitive armaments. We are trying to reduce armaments to preserve the world's solvency. We shall have to reduce competitive trade barriers to preserve the world's sanity. As between the two, trade barriers are more destructive than armaments and more threatening to the peace of the world.

Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure.