In the space of a decade, free trade, then synonymous with happy globalization, has become infrequent for the largest economic nations in the world. The “Liberation Day” perroerated by Donald Trump was to confirm the end of the Free Trade in favor of a new economic order based on “Reciprocity” Customs prices in a revisited protectionism scent. If the bad mine of world scholarships seems to stay its deadline, the debate on free trade never ceases to agitate opinion.
Associated with right -wing thought, the idea of commercial freedom is actually plastic enough to seduce the whole political spectrum to the most radical left. To weave its genealogy, we even discover that its source is drawn from progressive, pacifist and socialist, 18th and 19th centuries currents
“The notion only emerged in the 18th century, when the division of labor fits into economic discourse”
The exchange of goods is nothing ” natural “. Economic activity is developing for a long time in the regulated framework of mercantilism. The trade surplus is then a sign of enrichment of the nations which are engaged in fierce competition. Far from the free-free spirit, the state then intervenes oblique to stimulate exports and slow down imports. Without opposing mercantilism, the “Leave to do” Or free trade However, advocates the importation of rare or transformable products to be valued and re -exported.
Condition of “friendship between peoples”?
But the notion of free trade really emerged until the 18th century, when the division of labor fits into economic discourse. Adam Smith then sees in global free trade only an extension of the national market. David Ricardo advocates, for his part, the specialization of the most favorable productions to make the most commercial advantage. The sum of particular interests can only lead to collective happiness.
The proclaimed universalism of the Enlightenment could only support these principles of openness to the world. Since Montesquieu according to which, “Wherever there is trade, there are soft customs”, internationalization of exchanges can only “Bring to peace” peoples. This Irenic Vision of Commerce finds its followers in the progressive currents of the 19th century. Pacifist and socialist internationalists see the globalization of exchanges, accelerated by the technological revolution, the advent of a society reconciled with itself. The Saint-Simonian knight and the English radical Cobden will give their name to the famous free trade agreement of 1860. Marx even makes free trade the obligatory passage of the proletarian revolution when he sees in protectionism a “bourgeois” invention.
On the left, however, votes bind free trade in imperialism and make him bear responsibility for the downward pressure on wages by the increase in foreign workforce. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the left still equated protectionism to “Warrior nationalism”. In 1909, Norman Angell ensured in The great illusion that international trade has definitively buried war. Premonitory! The resurgence of customs practices of the interwar period does not observe the free-swangling optimism which finds brilliance with the general agreement on customs rates in 1947.
Reconsider the concept of limits
With the Cold War, the defenders of free trade, uniting liberals and conservatives, pass to the west. The Communists then denounce the deregulation of the very visible hands market of multinationals. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the free trade agreements seem to devote the end of history. Against the alter -globalization fringe which attacks the control of the GAFAM, a part of the left is delighted with these flows and the mixing of them, conditions of the“Friendship between peoples”.
“Trump’s displayed protectionism reconnects with land mercantilism”
This enthusiasm is taken in default by the 2008 crisis which resurfaces a protectionist discourse on the right as on the left. Against the drop in wages which he attributes to immigration, Jean-Luc Mélenchon pleads for a “Solidarity protectionism”. Ecological injunctions such as the dramas of relocations pose responsibility for all crises on free trade. COVIR and the war in Ukraine revealed the vulnerability of the system that is too interdependent forcing states to renationize subjects from which they had naively divel. The notion of health, industrial or food sovereignty is on the rise.
On the long history, it is difficult to withdraw from the freedom of the exchanges its share in the overall increase in the standard of living, if only by the innovations which it could arouse. It’s all about balance. “Good life” D’Aristote called for never neglecting the common good of the city as soon as it opened up to others through trade. Faced with the infinite requirement of the market, which needs to remove cultural and border obstacles to increase more, it is up to reminding that everything is not intended for market traffic and to reconsider the concept of limits.
Trump’s displayed protectionism reconnects with land mercantilism. He is accused of politicizing the threat of customs tariffs to flatter the electorate of the American middle classes. But faced with the unpredictable force of economic free trade, the American president would simply like to restore the power of politics. It is not yet convincing, but the intention is there!
