Title: The wealth of nations and the poverty of producers: the conflict between free trade and the New Deal Farm Program
Abstract: For over two centuries, the free trade doctrines of eighteenth-century political economists have been employed to justify the abolition of trade barriers, including those designed to protect agricultural interests. When controversy arose in the early 1800s regarding Great Britain's agricultural tariffs, opponents successfully made the case for repeal by relying on the theory of free trade. It has enjoyed continuous employment ever since, most recently in the twentieth century debate over the federal farm program established in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s.1 Throughout the half-century existence of the farm program, free traders have regarded it as protectionist legislation which shelters highcost, inefficient production and restricts agricultural trade. Today's free traders join their predecessors in calling for the abandonment of the federal farm program in order to make U.S. farm products more competitive in world markets. Farm export expansion, they argue, is a prerequisite for achieving a prosperous agriculture.2 The trade expansion argument, with its apparent simple logic, has acquired a contemporary charm but the attraction weakens when examined in a historical perspective. The chief obstacle to reclaiming farm export markets in the 1930s was not the New Deal farm program but the damage
Publication Year: 1987
Publication Date: 1987-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 4
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot