Debunking Dobbs — Part II

In the Christian Science Monitor’s Jan. 4 issue, GMU’s Don Boudreaux takes a whack at Dobbs in his “open letter” to the huckster of protectionism. Boudreaux writes:

If you’re still skeptical that America’s trade deficit is no cause for concern, perhaps you’ll be persuaded by Adam Smith, who wrote that “Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade.”

Smith correctly understood that with free trade, the economy becomes larger than any one nation – a fact that brings more human creativity, more savings, more capital, more specialization, more opportunity, more competition, and a higher standard of living to all those who can freely trade.

(I think that Don is one of the best economists around writing about trade — and his stuff relates to average Americans. Bravo.)