The House of Representatives is expected to vote today on whether to give President Obama trade promotion authority (TPA). This will allow his officials to negotiate trade agreements with Pacific and European nations.
The TPA bill sets guidelines that guarantee that the public will be able to read the final agreements before Congress gives them a clean, up-or-down vote.
We have previously supported this measure, and not just because of distaste for the dishonest fear-mongering of those who oppose it. Even if one ignores the ignoble pandering and politics of the debate, free trade is worth supporting on its merits. History speaks resoundingly in favor.
The political conversation often treats trade as a question merely of whether it will mean jobs leaving or coming to America. But this is a very short-term and narrow way of looking at it.
The issue at the heart of free trade is that freely chosen cooperation makes market economies vastly more efficient, paving the way to specialization, innovation and broad prosperity.
The extreme example in which no trade takes place is a society where everyone is a subsistence farmer. Each person builds his own plow, grows his own crops, milks his own cows, churns his own butter, erects his own fences, etc. Such a system is highly inefficient and replete with drudgery.
There is a good reason there are few subsistence farmers in advanced societies, and that reason is called trade.
Trade begins when Farmer Bob agrees to enter a mutually beneficial arrangement with Farmer Dan. Perhaps one focuses his attention on raising cattle, and trades his meat and milk for the crops raised by the other. This division of labor obviates the need for some of the drudgery by making each operation substantially more efficient. In addition, it allows each farmer the time to experiment with new and better ways of performing his respective specialty.
Over time, if this sort of cooperation comes to include others, it will result in further division of labor and more highly specialized and skilled trades. Perhaps Farmer John finds he and his family can make a better living by handling everyone else’s churning for them. Perhaps Farmer Joe has a knack for designing and fashioning farm equipment and chooses to do this full time.
Each of these newly emerging professions creates opportunities for innovation and, in turn, divides and specializes further, allowing more to be done and created with less effort.
As cooperation spreads, an economy can support all sorts of work that is less and less closely related to bare subsistence. Societies develop profitable and pleasant pursuits to consume the time and energy being wrung out of the increasingly efficient business of survival. Leisure gives rise to cultural expressions such as art and entertainment and cuisine and learning.
Professions emerge that not only sustain life but improve its quality, and as each arises a score of others are born to serve its needs as well, in which further innovations and efficiencies continue to make life better and humanity more prosperous.
There is a reason why most of the ideas that have advanced our species throughout history have emerged at points along the great trade routes. Exchange — trade — is not confined to goods and services, but is also about ideas. Trade makes life better.
This is what free trade really is: a broadening of the pool of economic actors that makes human society not only wealthier but also more pleasant in which to live.
Free trade among nations is a continuation of this.
It has other benefits, too, such as reducing the chances of war and violence, because it brings everyone closer to the point at which they simply have too much to lose.
To be sure, there are doubters who miss this broader picture. They say that jobs might be sent elsewhere. Labor competition is one result, and it is obviously true that if Farmer Joe’s dairy makes cheese that is twice as good at half the price, then cheesemakers on the neighboring farm will have to work more productively at something else.
But the goal of trade policy should not be just full employment at whatever cost. If it were, then we might as well return to the grinding drudgery of subsistence agriculture, where everyone has a job of struggling just to survive.
Trade is what has allowed man to flourish. Americans will flourish more or less depending on how much outside forces — including their own and foreign governments — let them interact and divide labor with more people around the world. This is why governments make free trade agreements. And it is why the poorest societies are those in which people are most isolated from foreign trade, whether by their own governments (as in North Korea) or by other circumstances such as war or political instability.
Trade Promotion Authority is the first step toward removing obstacles and broadening human economic cooperation. Congress should take it.
