Since the second Great War, trade among the industrialized
countries has expanded to an unprecedented extent -- much
faster than the rise in national output in Europe, the United
States, and Japan. For example, imports into the United
States rose to about 9.5 percent of gross national product
(GNP) in 1978, compared to only 4.5 percent in the early
1950s. This doubling of the importance of imports -- with a
commensurate increase on the export side -- is largely as-
sociated with a surge of trade in manufactures: automobiles,
aircraft, computers and other electronic products, consumer
durables, chemicals, and so forth. For individual European
countries at the present time, imports now constitute about 25
percent of total national expenditures.

This massive increase in trade has been fostered by sub-
stantial reductions in tariff barriers on industrial products, in
spite of considerable political tension and opposition. An ex-
traordinarily protectionist piece of legislation -- the Burke-
Hartke bill -- that would have effectively halved American
imports, was (unsuccessfully) introduced into the U.S. Con-
gress in the recession of 1970-1971. In the United States at
the present time, a tariff war is threatened by an American
law requiring the president to impose countervailing duties on
foreign products containing export subsidies. Currently,
European and Japanese farmers have succeeded in obtaining
highly protected domestic markets -- for which the yen or
mark prices of some agricultural products may be several
times those prevailing on world markets.

With the exception of agriculture, how, then, has this polit-
ical tension been resolved largely in favor of more -- rather
than less -- international trade? How do circumstances in the
postwar period, and the weight of arguments which
economists use, differ from those of earlier periods when pro-
tectionism prevailed?

In light of the widely disparate views of economists on
most public policy issues, their virtually unanimous espousal
of free trade for the past century and a half has been remark-
able. Since Adam Smith, economists in the mainstream have

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