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.

Featured Posts

Search Posts

Study

Ecology, Liberty & Property

Ecology, Liberty & Property: A Free Market Environmental Reader Publication Date: Spring 2000Price: $16.95ISBN #1-889865-02-8 Are free markets and environmental protection compatible?  Is…

Climate

Study

Earth Report 2000

Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet Date: 1999 Edited by: Ronald Bailey Published by: McGraw-Hill Earth Report 2000 is a…

Climate

News Release

Media Advisory: Earth Day Experts

Most Americans want a clean environment. That is no surprise. What surprises traditional environmental activists is that most people don’t support extensive federal regulation.

Climate

Products

Precautionary Petard

The Precautionary Principle – the proposition that new technologies or products should not be permitted until we know they won't endanger health, safety, or…

Climate

Products

Rachel Was Wrong

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring ushered in an era of national concern over the potential effects of synthetic chemicals. Published in 1962, Carson's book suggested that…

Chemical Risk

Op-Eds

The Market and Nature

(Originally appeared in The Freeman, September 1993) Many environmentalists are dissatisfied with the environmental record of free economies.  Capitalism, it is claimed, is…

Climate

Iain Murray

Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow

  • Banking and Finance
  • Trade and International

Ryan Young

Senior Economist

  • Antitrust
  • Business and Government
  • Regulatory Reform

Kent Lassman

President and CEO

  • Capitalism
  • Deregulation
  • Innovation