The Free Trade Ideal

Tariffs stay popular with politicians for a simple reason: they save visible jobs in a few industries, while the costs are spread invisibly across millions of shoppers. Voters notice the saved factory, not the few extra dollars on every purchase.

Yet economists overwhelmingly favor free trade. Open trade lets each country specialize in what it does best, and the results show it: countries that opened up — South Korea, China, Singapore — saw transformative growth, while closed economies like North Korea and Cuba fell behind.