the cost of trade barriers

To understand the cost of trade barriers, let's ponder a strange question: Would the Untied States be better off if we were to forbid trade across the Mississippi River? The logic of protectionism suggests that we would. For those of us on the east side of the Mississippi, new jobs would be created, since we would no longer have access to things like Boeing airplanes or Northern California wines. But nearly every skilled worker east of the Mississippi is already working, and we are doing things that we are better at than making airplanes or wine. Meanwhile, workers in the West, who are now very good at making airplanes and wine, would have to quit their jobs in order to make the goods normally produced in the East. They would not be as good at those jobs as the people who are doing them now. Preventing trade across the Mississippi would turn the specialization clock backward. We would be denied superior products and forced to do jobs that we're not particularly good at. In short, we would be poorer because we would be collectively less productive. This is why economists favor trade not just across the Mississippi, but also across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Global trade turns the specialization clock forward; protectionism stops that from happening.


Charles Wheelan. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan. W.W. Norton & Company. 2002. P.194