Fifty years from now, if American economists look back at the current period, they will be amazed at the number of prominent and preeminent economists who embraced "free trade" - no tariffs or barriers or restrictions - as a paramount doctrine, just as much as we look back with awe and derision at the Smoot-Hawley tariff regime, now.
What does it mean to warmly embrace a free-trade regime alongside a large and growing balance-of-trade imbalance?
For those who are tempted to temporize or suggest that it is acceptible, what are the calculations that show it is financially workable and what are the considerations if somewhere along the way economists reconsider that they may have been mistaken, not because the theory they relied on was "wrong", but because it wasn't ... comprehensive?
