Why did US Libertarians become disillusioned with Libertarianism?

First of all, it requires some study and serious effort.

Here is some direct and fascinating evidence from Vox Day, a former libertarian personality who is now an Alt Right blogger, about why he turned against libertarian ideology both on the issues of immigration and free trade:







As we can see, it was the feeble libertarian responses to the problem of free movement of people, and gaping holes in the theory of free trade that did it for Vox Day. Vox Day also cites Ian Fletcher’s Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why (2nd edn.; 2011) as an influential book against free trade.

Libertarianism is flawed by its insistence that the individual is sovereign, and its inability to see the importance and interests of larger groups, above all, the family and nation. Without government policies to secure and create a viable political unit of people with common interests where those people can flourish, individuals cannot flourish.

What would happen to America if it went full anarcho-capitalist, and if its government were abolished and government control of the borders were ended?

As all barriers to trade and capital movement were removed, the collapse of manufacturing and industry would be accelerated as free trade under absolute advantage would implode the US economy.

As centralised government border control was abolished, and decisions on immigration flows were totally privatised and decentralised, there would be a tidal wave of mass immigration from the Third World, which would destroy the demographic and cultural cohesion of America.

The owners of any big business and industry left would also happily bring in millions of cheap, foreign and easily exploitable labour from the Third World to smash wages and labour rights and make themselves internationally competitive.

Given the fact that there would be no US national government concerned with national security, hostile foreign governments like China or the Arab Gulf States would be able to buy up vast real estate, property and national assets, and then import millions of their own people, which would reduce vast areas of America to colonies of China or Saudi Arabia. As in Europe, whole areas would be gradually lost to segregated and fundamentalist Islamic communities, deeply hostile to the culture around them.

The result would be increasingly isolated, militarised gated communities of wealthy Americans, surrounded by a sea of Third World poverty, economic collapse, crime, drug cartels, violence, social collapse, intercommunal violence, and then civil war.

In short, America would turn into Brazil.

Some libertarians have realised this. Others remain mired in their utopian cult, as cult-like in its own way as dogmatic Marxism/Communism.

Trump and his Conservatives just Stole our Economics, People!

Well, partially, anyway.

Just look at Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity on – WTF?? – Fox News partially steal the Left’s agenda on economics, as they talk about the poisonous disaster of free trade, outsourcing, loss of manufacturing, the decline of the middle class, and mass unemployment in America. Just listen to Pat Buchanan praise Bernie and Ralph Nader at the end!



The world has turned upside down. This is why we need a reformed left, friends.

I’m on Twitter:
Lord Keynes @Lord_Keynes2
https://twitter.com/Lord_Keynes2

Those Free Trading British Cotton Textile Manufacturers

Here is one called John Wright in 1785:

“The minister cannot be ignorant that an alleviation of duties on India muslins and callicos, or giving encouragement to them by laying a heavier tax upon the cotton goods of this country, especially upon the infant manufacture of muslins and fine callicos, must depress and discourage the industry and ingenuity of our manufacturers at home, and have the strongest tendency to promote the sale of such foreign fabrics, in preference to those of Britain; that such a preference must soon be attended with evident injury to the public interest, as well as to the private trader, is too conspicuous, to admit of the verbosity of ratiocination.” (Wright 1785: 9–10).

By the 1840s and 1850s, these British cotton textile manufacturers had become converted to the religion of free trade, under the influence of Classical Political Economy, and had forgotten that they or their ancestors had been vehement protectionists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wright, John. 1785. An Address to the Members of Both Houses of Parliament on the Late Tax laid on Fustian and Other Goods. W. Eyres, Warrington, UK.

A Heterodox and Post Keynesian Bibliography on Trade Theory

I include the odd useful and relevant neoclassical work too.

I will update on a regular basis:

Baiman, R. 2010. “The Infeasibility of Free Trade in Classical Theory: Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage Parable has No Solution,” Review of Political Economy 22.3: 419–437.

Bairoch, Paul. 1993. Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York and London.

Brewer, A. 1985. “Trade with Fixed Real Wages and Mobile Capital,” Journal of International Economics 18: 177–186.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. Anthem Press, London.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2008. Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies, and the Threat to the Developing World. Random House Business, London.

Cripps, Francis and Wynne Godley. 1978. “Control of Imports as a Means to Full Employment and the Expansion of World Trade: The UK’s Case,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 2.3: 327–334.

Davidson, Paul. 2011. Post Keynesian Macroeconomic Theory: Foundation for Successful Economic Policies for the Twenty-First Century (2nd edn). Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham. pp. 249–256.

Davidson, Paul. 2015. “Is International Free Trade always Beneficial?,” in Paul Davidson, Post Keynesian Theory and Policy: A Realistic Analysis of the Market Oriented Capitalist Economy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. 124–135.

Duffield, J. 2010. ‘Ricardian ‘Comparative Advantage’ is Illusory,” Real-World Economics Review 54 (27 September). 62–78.
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue54/Duffield54.pdf

Fletcher, Ian. 2011. Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why (2nd edn.). Coalition for a Prosperous America, Sheffield, MA.

Hudson, Michael. 2010. America’s Protectionist Takeoff, 1815–1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy (new edn.). Islet, Dresden.

Kaldor, Nicholas. 1978. “The Nemesis of Free Trade,” in N. Kaldor, Further Essays on Applied Economics. Duckworth, London. 234–241.

Kaldor, Nicholas. 1980. “The Foundations of Free Trade Theory and their Implications for the Current World Recession,” in E. Malinvaud and J. P. Fitoussi (eds), Unemployment in Western Countries. MacMillan Press, London. 85–100.

Kaldor, Nicholas. 1981. “The Role of Increasing Returns, Technical Progress and Cumulative Causation in the Theory of International Trade and Economic Growth,” Économie Appliquée 34.4: 593–617.

Kaldor, Nicholas. 1985. Economics Without Equilibrium. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y. pp. 68–75.

Kaldor, Nicholas. 1996. Causes of Growth and Stagnation in the World Economy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

King, John Edward. 2013. David Ricardo. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK. pp. 81–88, 104–106.

Lavoie, Marc. 2014. Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. pp. 507–512.

Norman, Neville R. 1996. “A General Post Keynesian Theory of Protection,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 18.4: 509–531.

Palley, Thomas I. “The Free Trade Debate: A Left Keynesian Gaze.”
http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/international_markets/freetrade_debate.pdf

Palley, Thomas I. 2008. “Institutionalism and New Trade Theory: Rethinking Comparative Advantage and Trade Policy,” Journal of Economic Issues 42.1: 195–208.

Parrinello, S. 2006. “National Competitiveness and Absolute Advantage in a Global Economy,” Dipartimento di Economia pubblica, Working paper 95, University of Rome “La Sapienza.”

Prasch, Robert E. 1995. “Reassessing Comparative Advantage: The Impact of Capital Flows on the Argument for Laissez-Faire,” Journal of Economic Issues 29.2: 427–433.

Prasch, Robert E. 1996. “Reassessing the Theory of Comparative Advantage,” Review of Political Economy 8.1: 37–56.

Pullen, John. 2006. “Did Ricardo really have a Law of Comparative Advantage? A Comparison of Ricardo’s Version and the Modern Version,” History of Economics Review 44: 59–75.

Robinson, Joan. 1973. “The Need for a Reconsideration of the Theory of International Trade,” in M. B. Connolly and A. K. Swoboda (eds.), International Trade and Money: The Geneva Essays. Allen and Unwin, London. 15–25.

Robinson, Joan. 1974. Reflections on the Theory of International Trade. The University Press, Manchester.

Robinson, Joan. 1977. “What Are the Questions?,” Journal of Economic Literature 15.4: 1318–1339, at 1333–1336.

Robinson, Joan. 1979. Aspects of Development and Underdevelopment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York.

Ruffin, Roy J. 2002. “David Ricardo’s Discovery of Comparative Advantage,” History of Political Economy 34.4: 727–748.

Shaikh, A. 2007. “Globalization and the Myth of Free Trade,” in A. Shaikh (ed.), Globalization and the Myths of Free Trade: History, Theory, and Empirical Evidence. Routledge, London 50–68.

Some other work that looks interesting:

Meoqui, Jorge Morales. 2011. “Comparative Advantage and the Labor Theory of Value,” History of Political Economy 43.4: 743–763.

Steedman, I. 1999. “Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities and the Open Economy,” Metroeconomica 50.3: 260–276.

Meoqui, Jorge Morales. 2016. “Ricardo’s Numerical Example versus Ricardian Trade Model: A Comparison of Two Distinct Notions of Comparative Advantage,” July
http://etdiscussion.worldeconomicsassociation.org/?wea_paper=ricardos-numerical-example-versus-ricardian-trade-model-a-comparison-of-two-distinct-notions-of-comparative-advantage

Schumacher, Reinhard. 2012. Free Trade and Absolute and Comparative Advantage: A Critical Comparison of Two Major Theories of International Trade. Universitätsverlag Potsdam, Potsdam.

The Cult of Free Trade in a Nutshell

The argument for unrestricted free trade by Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage requires a number of stated or hidden fundamental assumptions to work properly, as follows:

(1) domestic capital or factors of production like capital goods and skilled labour are not internationally mobile, and instead will be re-employed in the sector/sectors in which the country’s comparative advantage lies;

(2) workers are fungible, and will be re-trained easily and moved to the new sectors where comparative advantage lies.

(3) it does not matter what you produce (e.g., you could produce pottery), as long as you do it in a way that gives you comparative advantage;

(4) technology is essentially unchanging and uniform; and

(5) there are no returns to scale.

Assumption (1) doesn’t hold today and what happens is movement of capital under the principle of absolute advantage (Lavoie 2014: 508). This results in a type of race to the bottom for industrialised countries that do not protect their industries.

(2) is of course highly questionable. (3), (4) and (5) are utter nonsense. Abstract pro-free trade arguments often seem to make the implicit assumption of full employment, or the effective tendency to full employment, in all nations as well, which is yet another mad and unrealistic assumption (Lavoie 2014: 508).

Movement of capital to a place where it has absolute advantage tends to cause de-industrialization in Western countries, as capital moves to nations with the lowest unit labour and factor costs, and higher wage countries experience falling wages, high unemployment and rising trade deficits.

A country like China actually makes the process worse by actively intervening via mercantilist industrial policies to promote offshoring of manufacturing to their country. But even if this intervention didn’t happen, unrestricted free trade would still have deleterious consequences for the high wage countries. For Post Keynesian alternative policies to free trade, see Norman (1996), Cripps and Godley (1978), and Lavoie (2014: 507–512).

The argument for pure free trade is built on sand and is almost wholly intellectually bankrupt if it is supposed to be describing the world in which we live. A longer analysis is here. This theoretical incompetence in neoclassical and Austrian economics on the issue of free trade is accompanied by a blockheaded ignorance of the real-world success of protectionism (see Bairoch 1993; Chang 2002 and 2008; Hudson 2010; Reinert 2007).

The argument for free trade would be a joke, if it didn’t have such disgusting and terrible consequences for real human beings.

Look at the images of Detroit here and weep. This once prosperous city has been wrecked by the cult of free trade.

Further reading
“The Early British Industrial Revolution and Infant Industry Protectionism: The Case of Cotton Textiles,” June 22, 2010.

“Protectionism and US Economic History,” June 8, 2014.

“Mises on the Ricardian Law of Association: The Flaws of Praxeology,” January 25, 2011.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bairoch, Paul. 1993. Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York and London.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. Anthem Press, London.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2008. Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies, and the Threat to the Developing World. Random House Business, London.

Cripps, Francis and Wynne Godley. 1978. “Control of Imports as a Means to Full Employment and the Expansion of World Trade: The UK’s Case,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 2.3: 327–334.

Hudson, Michael. 2010. America’s Protectionist Takeoff, 1815–1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy (new edn.). Islet, Dresden.

Lavoie, Marc. 2014. Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

Norman, Neville R. 1996. “A General Post Keynesian Theory of Protection,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 18.4: 509–531.

Reinert, Erik S. 2007. How Rich Countries Got Rich, and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. Carroll & Graf, New York.

Robinson, J. 1973. “The Need for a Reconsideration of the Theory of International Trade,” in M. B. Connolly and A. K. Swoboda (eds.), International Trade and Money: The Geneva Essays. Allen and Unwin, London. 15–25.

Mises on the Ricardian Law of Association: The Flaws of Praxeology

I have already written a post criticising Misesian praxeology (“Mises’ Praxeology: A Critique,” October 1, 2010), but have recently been challenged to present specific examples of the unsound arguments in Mises’ praxeology which involve false stated or hidden assumptions (see “Apodictic Certainty of Praxeology”).

Mises’ discussion of the “Ricardian law of association” (or free trade by comparative advantage) is a perfect example of this, and is given in Mises’ Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (4th edn, 1996), pp. 159–164 (for discussion, see Murphy and Gabriel 2008: 65–66; Vaughn 1994: 78).

First, it is perfectly clear that even Mises admits some role for empirical evidence in praxeology. In fact, the alleged “apodictic certainty” for his praxeology claimed by some modern Austrians vanishes when we look carefully at a candid passage of Mises himself:

“Every theorem of praxeology is deduced by logical reasoning from the category of action. It partakes of the apodictic certainty provided by logical reasoning that starts from an a priori category. Into the chain of praxeological reasoning the praxeologist introduces certain assumptions concerning the conditions of the environment in which an action takes place. Then he tries to find out how these special conditions affect the result to which his reasoning must lead. The question whether or not the real conditions of the external world correspond to these assumptions is to be answered by experience. But if the answer is in the affirmative, all the conclusions drawn by logically correct praxeological reasoning strictly describe what is going on in reality” (Mises 1978 [1962]: 44).

An assumption about “real conditions of the external world” is a synthetic proposition. If the “question whether or not the real conditions of the external world correspond to these assumptions is to be answered by experience,” then we need empirical evidence.

And we can add to Mises’ last sentence: if the answer is in the negative, then the conclusions drawn even by valid praxeological reasoning do not describe what is going on in reality. They describe a non-existent, fantasy world.

Mises’ praxeological case for free trade is such an example. Mises’ argument is itself heavily dependent on Ricardo:

“Ricardo expounded the law of association in order to demonstrate what the consequences of the division of labor are when an individual or a group, more efficient in every regard, cooperates with an individual or a group less efficient in every regard. He investigated the effects of trade between two areas, unequally endowed by nature, under the assumption that the products, but not the workers and the accumulated factors of future production (capital goods), can freely move from each area into the other” (Mises 1996: 159).

“Ricardo, however, starts from the assumption that there is mobility of capital and labor only within each country, and not between the various countries …. Now, Ricardo’s assumptions by and large held good for his age. Later, in the course of the nineteenth century, conditions changed. The immobility of capital and labor gave way; international transfer of capital and labor became more and more common. Then came a reaction. Today capital and labor are again restricted in their mobility. Reality again corresponds to the Ricardian assumptions (Mises 1996: 164).

Mises correctly notes that there were certain assumptions made by Ricardo for his principle of comparative advantage to work. Mises was writing the original edition of Human Action before 1949, long before the era of globalization and liberalized capital markets that began from the 1970s.

The period from 1945 to 1973 was indeed a world where capital controls restricted foreign investment to some extent and labour mobility was more restricted than in the 19th century. Mises even concedes that by the late 19th century the conditions assumed by Ricardo did not necessarily hold.

What Mises completely misses is that, because of hidden assumptions in the argument for comparative advantage, it is highly doubtful whether his argument for comparative advantage works even for 1945–1973 period. Before we examine the hidden assumptions, however, it is useful to look at the stated assumptions.

Even neoclassical arguments for free trade rely on David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, though of course modern neoclassical theory uses the more sophisticated Heckscher–Ohlin model as its defence of free trade. But this model has been increasingly challenged by modern critics (e.g., Gomory and Baumol 2000), and there are rival theories in mainstream economics like New Trade Theory (NTT), to which Paul Krugman has made contributions (for some other critical work on free trade, see Prasch 1996; Gomory and Baumol 2000; Reinert 2007; Fletcher 2008; Baiman 2010).

It should be noted that Ricardo wrote the book Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817. This was at a time before the full effects of the industrial revolution were clear, a point which we will return to below.

Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage requires two conditions to work properly, as follows:

(1) Domestic factors of production like capital goods and skilled labour are not internationally mobile, and instead will be re-employed in the sector/sectors in which the country’s comparative advantage lies;

(2) Workers are fungible, and will be re-trained easily and moved to the new sectors where comparative advantage lies (Prasch 1996: 39–40).

As is admitted even by Mises, by the late 19th century assumption (1) was questionable.

Today it is also the case that both capital goods themselves and investment money for production are very mobile, so that (1) is also not true. Proposition (2) is also questionable in many cases (Prasch 1996: 40–41).

Once capital becomes extremely mobile internationally, we no longer have comparative advantage, but absolute advantage. It is not at all clear that free trade under “absolute advantage” is beneficial to all nations. In Ricardo’s day, internationally mobile capital was not that significant. David Ricardo observed that the immobility of capital in his day prevented capital from seeking absolute advantage. He described it as

“the difficulty with which capital moves from one country to another, to seek a more profitable employment, and the … [ease] with which it invariably passes from one province to another in the same country” (Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 7.18).

In Ricardo’s day, capital mobility did not happen on a large scale because capital and technology were more difficult to transfer. But it never occurred to Ricardo that, in a world of mobile capital and easily transferable technology, capital would seek absolute advantage in a destructive way to its home country.

The neoclassical and Misesian argument for free trade is dependent on the capital of one country remaining in that country and being put to work in some other productive domestic industry, where comparative advantage lies. This is not what happens today, where capital from Western countries seeks absolute advantage in the developing countries. Movement of capital to a place where it has absolute advantage simply causes de-industrialization in Western countries, as capital moves to nations with the lowest unit labour costs, and higher wage countries experience falling wages and high unemployment (Holt 2007: 103). Moreover, the large-scale movement of service industries overseas (often called “outsourcing”) is just as damaging.

With the collapse of manufacturing and other production, nations suffer higher unemployment and higher trade deficits. Capital does not simply move from one domestic sector to another where comparative advantage lies, because of international capital mobility and the drive for lower wages and higher profits. Thus the changes in domestic investment that would happen under the assumptions of Ricardo do not happen.

But, even if all the assumptions stated above are true, there are still devastating hidden assumptions underlying the whole argument of Ricardo and Mises. These hidden assumptions are precisely the type of synthetic propositions I have referred to in my earlier post on praxeology.

The hidden assumptions are as follows:

(1) it does not matter what you produce (e.g., you could produce pottery), as long as you do it in a way that gives you comparative advantage;

(2) technology is unchanging and uniform; and

(3) there are no returns to scale (Galbraith 2008: 68; Chang 2003: 292).

These hidden assumptions are utterly absurd. First, it does matter what you produce. Reliance on primary commodity exports whose prices are subject to volatility is not a successful strategy for economic development in most countries; in fact, such countries reliant on primary commodities and service industries are usually poor developing nations.

Moreover, as Galbraith as noted:

“Comparative advantage operates on the assumption of unchanged technology and constant returns to scale. There are no economies of scale, no learning curve, no improvements in productivity as output increases. The only requirement is that conditions of production differ, so that one good—in terms of the other—is relatively more expensive in one country and relatively less so in the other. The only efficiency gained from trade stems from the reorganization of production and the reallocation of factors—labor, capital, land—to their best uses in the new, larger, common market … But the argument does not generalize to the real world. Given three countries and three commodities, it is not obvious that each country will always be the relatively most efficient producer of exactly one good. And then what? Does the country that has no comparative advantage produce nothing? Does it refuse to trade? If its “comparative advantage” lies in exporting labour and closing up shop, is this acceptable? The textbooks do not say. The actual world has some 220 countries and thousands of distinct commodities. In this world—the one where we actually live—the calculation of comparative advantage is intractable, and the doctrine says nothing about who should specialize in what, still less that specialization will exactly reproduce full employment in each place ... Further, comparative advantage is based on the concept of constant returns: the idea that you can double or tripe the output of any good simply by doubling or tripling the inputs. But this is not generally the case. For manufactured products, increasing returns, learning, and technical change are the rule, not the exception: the cost of production falls with experience. With increasing returns, the lowest cost will be incurred by the country that starts the earliest and moves fastest on any particular product line … For most other commodities, where land or ecology places limits on the expansion of capacity, the opposite condition—diminishing returns—is the rule. In this situation, there can be no guarantee that an advantage of relative cost will persist once specialization and the resulting expansion of production take place” (Galbraith 2008: 68).

In the real world, production in high-value-added sectors like manufacturing leads to innovation, advancement of technology, increasing returns to scale, synergies, and strong economic growth. That is why manufacturing drives industrialization and makes nations rich. The basis of a modern first world economy is manufacturing and high-value added industries. Writing in 1817, Ricardo did not understand the full implications of the industrial revolution for economic development.

As is shown brilliantly by Erik S. Reinert in How Rich Countries Got Rich, and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (Carroll & Graf, New York, 2007, p. 301ff.), a developing nation can follow rules of comparative advantage to the letter, and still remain mired in poverty and stagnation, with low-valued-added production and decreasing returns to scale.

A catastrophic example of the effects of comparative advantage was seen in Mongolia’s economy in the 1990s. Mongolia, under advice from the World Bank, implemented free trade, which caused its manufacturing sector to collapse, and it shifted to raising livestock (where its comparative advantage lay, according to classical trade theory). The result was a halving of per capita GDP and ecological disaster, as increasing livestock production led to diminishing returns, overgrazing, and desertification (Reinert 2004: 157–214).

Such free trade by comparative advantage is not a successful path to economic development.

In a world where a developing nation specialises in primary commodities, often according to the dictates of comparative advantage, it is normally cheaper to buy manufactured goods from overseas. But, under such circumstances, a Third World country will not industrialize. It will be permanently mired in poverty, commodity exports or service industries (the typical type of third world economy). There are sound reasons for violating free trade theory and creating your own high-value added industries, where the home market has sufficient demand for the products of those industries, through targeted infant industry protectionism or modern import substitution industrialization (Chang 2002, 2003, 2007; see also “Industrial Policy: A Brief Comment,” June 21, 2010)

The alleged economic advantages of free trade claimed by Misesian praxeology and by Ricardo are simply false, because of the false hidden premises in the argument.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baiman, R. 2010. “The Infeasibility of Free Trade in Classical Theory: Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage Parable has no Solution,” Review of Political Economy 22.3: 419–437.

Chang, H.-J. 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, Anthem Press, London.

Chang, H.-J. 2003. Rethinking Development Economics, Anthem Press, London.

Chang, H.-J. 2007. Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies, and the Threat to the Developing World, Random House Business, London.

Fletcher, I. 2008. “Fatal Flaws in the Theory of Comparative Advantage,” American Economic Alert (November 6)
http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=3076

Galbraith, J. K. 2008. The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should too, Free Press, New York.

Gomory, R. E. and Baumol, W. J. 2000. Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Holt, R. P. F. 2007. “Post Keynesian Economics?,” in M. Forstater, G. Mongiovi, and S. Pressman (eds), Post Keynesian Macroeconomics: Essays in Honour of Ingrid Rima, Routledge, London. 89–107.

Korzeniewicz, R. P. 2001. “Comparative Advantage and Unequal Exchange,” in P. Anthony O’Hara (ed.), Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Volume 1. A–K, Routledge, London and New York. 127–131.

Mises, L. 1978 [1962]. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method (2nd edn, Sheed Andrews & McMeel, Kansas City.

Mises, L. 1996. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (4th rev. edn), Fox and Wilkes, San Francisco.

Murphy, R. P. and A. Gabriel, 2008. Study Guide to Human Action: A Guide Tutorial of Ludwig von Mises’s Classic Work, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

Prasch, R. E. 1996. “Reassessing the Theory of Comparative Advantage,” Review of Political Economy 8.1: 37–56.

Prestowitz, C. 2004. “Free Trade and Outsourcing Are Not the Same,” Financial Times (25 April).

Prestowitz, C. V. 2005. “China as No. 1,” American Prospect, February 21
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=china_as_no_1

Prestowitz, C. V. 2010. The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America’s Decline, and How we Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era, Free Press, New York and London.

Reinert, E. S. “Diminishing Returns and Economic Sustainability; The Dilemma of Resource-based Economies under a Free Trade Regime,”
http://www.othercanon.org/uploads/SUM%20paper%20diminishing%20returns.doc#32;paper%20diminishing%20returns.doc

Reinert, E. S. 2004. “Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s,” in E. S. Reinert (ed.), Globalization, Economic Development, and Inequality: An Alternative Perspective, Edward Elgar Pub., Cheltenham. 157–214.

Reinert, E. S. 2007. How Rich Countries got Rich, and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, Carroll and Graf, New York.

Roberts, P. C. 2004. “Clarifications on the Case for Free Trade” Mises Daily (January 10) http://mises.org/daily/1420

Roberts, P. C. 2007. “Commentary & Analysis: Economists In Denial; Blind To Offshoring's Adverse Impact,” Manufacturing & Technology News 14.3 (February 6)
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/07/0206/art2.html

Roberts, P. C. 2009. “The Problem of Free Trade,” Counterpunch 16.2 (January 16–31).

Ruffin, R. 2002. “David Ricardo’s Discovery of Comparative Advantage,” History of Political Economy 34.4: 727–748.

Schumer, C. and Roberts, P. C. 2004. “Second Thoughts on Free Trade,” New York Times (6 January).

Vaughn, K. I. 1994. Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.