CEI believes that free and open trade is a cornerstone of economic freedom, international development, and peaceful cooperation between nations. It enhances consumer freedom and choice, allows nations to take advantage of their comparative advantages, and reduces potentially dangerous national rivalries. Free trade is responsible for lifting billions of people out of poverty over the past half century and has encouraged life-saving and -enhancing innovation over that time.

As a result, CEI experts have encouraged and supported trade-enhancing policies and treaties over the years, including “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority, specific trade deals, and multilateral efforts such as the Doha round of the World Trade Organization. We have opposed increased tariffs, attempts to increase regulation through trade deal language, and the trend toward bilateral rather than multilateral deals. CEI continues to make the case for free trade in the face of increased bipartisan hostility to the idea.

CEI’s experts also work with like-minded colleagues abroad to oppose harmful initiatives, such as working with British colleagues to stop that country’s competition agency from blocking mergers between American firms based on speculative reasoning.

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Imagine There Are No Countries

“Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do,” John Lennon once told us. Ignoring Lennon's grammatical error, that is exactly what University of Wisconsin-Madison…

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Staff & Scholars

Iain Murray

Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow

  • Banking and Finance
  • Trade and International

Ryan Young

Senior Economist and Director of Publications

  • Antitrust
  • Business and Government
  • Regulatory Reform

Kent Lassman

President and CEO

  • Capitalism
  • Deregulation
  • Innovation