Roger Scruton - On Free Trade

 

The Money Changers Marinus van Reymerswaele (Follower of) c.-1548

It is only free-market dogma that persuades people that free trade is a real possibility in the modern world.  

All trade is massively subsidized, usually in the interests of the stronger party—as American agriculture is subsidized, not merely by direct payments to farmers but by laws that permit crops ruled unsafe elsewhere, by standards in animal welfare that we in Britain would not countenance, by the existence of publicly funded roads and infrastructure that ensure rapid transport of goods to the port of exit, and so on. 

And all trade is or ought to be subject to prohibition and restriction in the interest not merely of local conditions but also of moral, religious and national imperatives.

 If free trade means the importation of pornography into Islamic countries, who can defend it? If it means taking advantage of sweated or even slave labour where that is available and importing the tortured remains of battery-farmed animals wherever they can be sold, why is it such a boon? If it means allowing anonymous shareholders who neither know nor care about Hungary to own and control the Budapest water supply, is it not the most dangerous of long-term policies? The fact is that free trade is neither possible nor desirable. 

It is for each nation to establish the regulatory regime that will maximize trade with its neighbours, while protecting the local customs, moral ideals and privileged relations on which national identity depends.

Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy [London and New York: Continuum, 2006].