In recent months political forces against free or liberalized trade have drawn a few drops of blood in skirmishes over international market access. United States President Clinton lost his battle with his congress for "fast track" powers for signing liberalized trade agreements with other nations. "Most favoured nations" tariff status for China has come under fire in the U.S. Prime Minister Chretien of Canada has faced similar criticism in his "Team Canada" trade liberalization hunting expeditions to Asia. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Vancouver has drawn shrill snipes from a few small, dry and familiar voices, many of whom seem to have no raison d'etre beyond jumping on the bones of those who engage in business or work for a living. One supposes protest is their living, such as it is.

Most of these groups carry the banners of labour unions or of self-styled "marginalized" groups claiming to represent the poor, or persecuted third world minorities or "community-based" organizations. A quick look at their leadership and individuals in their tiny ranks turns up the usual cast of characters that appear at all rallies that might oppose market capitalism or anything that favours an market-based or business point of view. Anything American is by definition evil. Many are natural or intellectual progeny of old school marxists or U.S. draft-dodgers and radicals who fled to Canada in the 60s. Their prejudices are as deep as their knowledge and objectivity is shallow. So be it. A free society encourages everyone to ride their favourite hobby horses, however silly, ridiculous and feeble.

Forget the ironies and the hypocracies that most of the demonstrations expose when they use civil liberties as their stalking horse to oppose free trade. For example, what would trade unions know of democracy or freedom of association when closed shops and goon-enforced discipline is the norm in modern North American unions? Or would it be polite to ask where these demonstrators or their progenitors were before communist countries gave up state monopoly economic planning? Forget the selectivity of these demonstrators's interest in certain minorities in certain countries, while they preach focussed hate at certain groups or occupations associated with economic success at home. Ignore the puerile misunderstandings of capital flows and business activity. Focus instead on the one issue among the many these angst-ridden poster and protest makers fail to comprehend. Free trade or liberalized trade is a form of war prevention insurance. Since 1950, the case for its usefulness is pretty clear.

In the late 40s the United States, Britain and Canada led the formation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) close on the end of the Second World War. This trade agreement's membership has grown to include most of the major economies of the world and will soon include all the former communist countries of Europe and Asia. Having led the war effort, the Allied were looking for ways to prevent the next one. The United Nations and GATT sprang from the same motives: giving peace a chance (apologies to the memory of John Lennon.) GATT is an instrument for free trade. It has been an unbridled success both economically and politically.

The European Economic Union, begun in the 50s, follows GATT's pattern. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), created in the late 80s, also follows the same trade liberalization path. No economist of any stature anywhere in the world denies the logical power of comparative advantage and liberalized trade. At the intellectual level, free trade won on the field of battle of ideas long ago. Political realizations take longer.

Why did GATT prosper? Largely because two catastrophic wars taught the world's leaders that closing borders to trade or prosecuting trade sanctions or erecting tariffs walls will encourage the country on the outside of those walls to take with their armies what they could not get with their nation's industries. Witness the effect of the 1930's Smoot-Hawley Act on Japan's trade and military antagonism with the United States. Or the British and French market isolation and war reparations revenge on Germany in the 1930s that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the ascension of Hitler's Nazis. Germans followed Hitler because they were determined to reassert German economic prosperity with force since the rules of the economic game made any other route evidently impossible. Restrictive trade policy creates desperation. Desperation is the prime condition for war.

Recent events support open borders. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapsed with it, economic openness broke out everywhere. So did liberalized trade. So too did democracy. And so too did prosperity. Yet liberalized trade was more a cause than an effect. Even before the Cold War's dramatic death throes of the late 80s and early 90s, the Soviet Bloc and China pursued freer domestic markets and looked for more open trade with the rest of the world. The result: more prosperity, particularly in Asia, and with that opening contact, a wider commerce of political and social ideas that affected the internal affairs of the Asian and European communist regimes. Free trade leads to freer association. People who know and do business with one another do not take up arms against each other. Crudely put, war is bad for business. On the other hand, if trade is restrictive, if business is bad domestically, and if the folks at home aren't all that pleased with local political affairs either, war can be an inviting, diverting alternative. Witness Iraq or Iran. Or Cuba and North Korea. What would help those international pariahs' suffering people the most? Free trade. How does one keep a population enslaved? Deny it access to trade and association with other countries. Those who decry the democratic niceties of Western countries' trade partners should realize that freer trade is the single most likely salubrious influence that a democratic country might have on a regime less libertarian than one would like.

The statistics that measure the liberalized trade's bountiful effects on incomes and jobs are overwhelming. Europe owes its peaceful prosperity in the last 50 years to it. Since NAFTA, Canada's trade with the U.S. has doubled. Its economic growth has been the fastest in the developed world. It economy was robust enough to finance the elimination of the federal deficit while maintaining the social safety net Canadians so revere. The United States also prospered. As much as a third of U.S. economic growth stems from increases in exports to Canada and Mexico, while its inflation and unemployment levels are the lowest in 30 years. While Mexico had its problems, NAFTA's embrella fostered the U.S. bailout of Mexico in its currency and bank crisis. In pre-NAFTA times, things would have been much worse. The trade agreement saved Mexico from the worst effects of domestic political and economic mismanagement.

So for those who would carry a cudgel for closed borders and repressive poverty in splendid isolation, there is nothing but bad news in more knowledge about liberalized international business relations. Ignorant self-interest is a prerequisite condition for opposition to trade liberaliztion. Free trade creates a world safe for everyone, not just for those who would practice capitalism. Closed borders are for closed little minds. Put that on your next banners, you marginalized alliance of professional victims, you.

© 1997 Brian Buchanan