What Are The Costs And Benefits Of Participation In International Free Trade Agreements

He argued that there was no point in protecting the Scottish wine industry if it cost 30 times the price of importing wine from warmer countries. Smith also argued that if our competitors fare better, they will be able to buy more of our exports. Smith saw trade as a way for all countries to improve. This contrasted with the then popular zero-sum Mercilist theories. The biggest criticism of free trade agreements is that they are responsible for outsourcing employment. There are seven total drawbacks: «In a free trade and economic free trade regime, it would be unalemly important if iron were on one side of a political border and labor, coal and blast furnaces on the other. But as it stands, people have found ways to impoverish and impoverish one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness. John Maynard Keynes.. .