Sheldon Richman's latest in his series on Austrian school economist Carl Menger, this time focusing on free trade in light of the Trump administration's shortsighted tariff policies.

“We could do quite well without the categories of exports and imports. Adam Smith wisely said almost 250 years ago that the balance-of-trade doctrine was 'absurd.' In a sense, only two kinds of goods and services exist as far as I’m concerned: those that I produce and those that everyone else produces. That is true for you too. Countries don’t trade. Individual people do. Where governments don’t permit this, they should get out of the way.

Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics, eloquently described trade in his pioneering work, Principles of Economics (1871, pp. 175ff). We need to rediscover his insights in this new and perilous Age of Protectionism. ”