Skip to main content

The Perils Of Free Trade

March 2023
1min read

“Land of the Free Trade,” by John Steele Gordon, in the July/August issue of American Heritage , was far below your usual standard. Instead of being a careful look at the forces that shaped history, it is a polemic to justify the greed of those who profit from the destruction of our national economy.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was made obsolete as soon as it was written by the Industrial Revolution. This is not to take credit away from Smith, but to say we should not make a gospel of carefully selected parts of The Wealth of Nations . For example, Smith said, with very good sense, that a tax on wages is the most stupid, evil, and destructive way to finance the government. Yet that is what the income tax has come to be. This in turn makes American goods uncompetitive against imported goods, which do not carry this hidden tax burden. Buying imported goods is, in large measure, attractive because it is tax avoidance. We impose a tariff duty on domestic goods, from which imported goods are exempt, and call it free trade. Yet if one were to propose taxing imported goods the 30 or 40 percent equivalent to the hidden tax on American manufactures, all the John Steele Gordons would spring into life with a shout that Adam Smith must be obeyed.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "November 1993"

Authored by: Nathan Ward

The greatest war in history came to an end on November 11, but not without a final cruel twist.

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Dear John Smith

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Lesbian Chic

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Nixon Redux; Fighting Shirley

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Birth of the Yale Woman

Authored by: John Lukacs

Seventy-five years after the guns fell silent along the Western Front, the work they did there remains of incalculable importance to the age we inhabit and the people we are

Authored by: Donald R. Morris

A TEXAS MARINE WHO DREW BEAUTIFULLY AND WROTE AS WELL AS HE DREW BECAME THE LAUREATE OF THE MEN WHO CHECKED THE LAST GREAT GERMAN OFFENSIVE. ALL BUT FORGOTTEN TODAY, HIS 1926 BESTSELLER REMAINS PERHAPS THE FINEST ACCOUNT OF AMERICANS IN THE GREAT WAR.

Authored by: J. S. Cartier

THREE-QUARTERS OF A CENTURY HAS NOT BEEN TIME ENOUGH TO EFFACE THE REMNANTS OF VIOLENCE ALONG A FOUR-HUNDRED-MILE FRONT

Authored by: David Nasaw

The great democratic art form got off to a very rocky start. People simply didn’t want to crowd into a dark room to look at a flickering light, and it took nearly twenty years for Americans and motion pictures to embrace each other.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.