Earlier this month, I gave a talk at Boise State University titled “The Case for Free Trade.” Here’s the video and what follows are the highlights, with the approximate time at which they occurred.
10:00: Every law is violent.
12:00: Gains from exchange.
14:00: My famous Rita’s Friendly Oasis.
19:10: Comparative advantage.
20:30: Babe Ruth.
21:40: McCartney and Starr.
22:25: Dikembe Mutombo.
23:30: Nothing magic about borders.
24:20: Donald Trump–corn for cars.
27:50: Don Boudreaux: If real wars were like trade wars.
29:10: Trade and technology are similar.
31:30: Manufacturing jobs vs. output.
33:20: Middle class is disappearing upward.
34:40: Examples of what I get from international trade.
36:10: My Bastiat joke (which I got from the late William Breit.)
36:40: Tariffs and blowing up railroads.
37:20: Reagan’s analogy: shooting hole in boat.
37:50: Joan Robinson: boulders in harbor.
38:10: Henry George.
39:05: Bastiat’s petition of the candlemakers.
40:00: Does trade increase or decrease jobs?
44:00: Buy American?
46:00: Sugar import quotas.
49:15: Dumping.
51:00: Senator Robert Byrd.
52:30: Idaho Senator Larry Craig and Micron.
54:30: Trade deficit.
56:30: Where does the trade deficit go?
58:10: Michael Dukakis’s flub during 1988 election.
59:20: Trade promotes peace.
1:00:20: When goods don’t cross borders, armies will.
1:01:30: Doubling of trade leads to 20% decline in belligerence.
1:03:00: My Dutch Uncle advice to undergrads and high-schoolers.
A couple of minutes as about 400 students leave auditorium after end of speech.
1:08:50: First question, about government and identity.
1:11:00: Are free trade deals necessary?
1:12:00: China-U.S. trade war.
1:15:30: Is economists’ case for trade glib? The Autor evidence.
1:18:20: My free trade economist friend’s questions to steelworkers in their 50s.
1:20:00: Doritos and money.
1:21:45: Infant industry argument and The Myth of MITI.
1:24:50: Isn’t the U.S. economy strong?
1:26:50: Ben Olson: corrupt government selling resources.
1:29:10: China stealing intellectual property.
1:32:45: The role of gold in people’s financial portfolio.
1:34:00: Sergio: Child labor and tradeoff between material and spiritual.
1:39:30: Linda Symms: Trade sanctions on Iran and people are smarter than cats.
1:41:45: The philosophical case against patents and copyrights.
1:43:45: Bitcoin.
UPDATE: Colin Fraizer, in a comment below, has graciously supplied a link that gives hot links for each of the highlights.
READER COMMENTS
john hare
Nov 30 2019 at 1:58pm
Clicked in at 10:00 and ended up watching the rest of the talk.
One possible quibble at about 45 when you said that trade does not create jobs. It may depend on definitions. If a hunter gatherer is said to have a job, then I would agree. But if a hunter gatherer or subsistence farmer becomes a productive factory worker, then the person that lost the job in the productive country will likely start doing something else with similar productivity to the lost job. It goes from one widget maker and one hunter gatherer to a maker of type two widgets and a widget maker.
I guess it comes down to if a subsistence farmer or homeless beggar is said to have a job.
David Henderson
Nov 30 2019 at 2:29pm
Yes, I think a hunter gatherer has a job.
David Henderson
Nov 30 2019 at 2:30pm
Addendum: When you say someone has a job, there is nothing in that term that suggests he/she is an employee.
john hare
Nov 30 2019 at 6:26pm
Fair enough. Thanks
Jon Murphy
Nov 30 2019 at 6:03pm
The word “job” is meant to imply any productive activity, which incorporates a broad range of things.
Colin Fraizer
Nov 30 2019 at 8:04pm
Other readers (or video viewers) might find this useful:
https://colinfraizer.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
[I just added links to what Prof. Henderson posted above. Any errors are mine and regretted.]
David Henderson
Dec 1 2019 at 5:42pm
Wow! Thanks, Colin.
Colin Fraizer
Dec 1 2019 at 6:48pm
If you scroll to the bottom of the page I created, I included the text you would need to just copy and and paste into this blog entry so the blog entry on EconLog has the links.
[I understand that there may be complications that make that harder to do than it sounds. Just trying to be nice, but not offended if it’s more hassle than you want to take on. 🙂 I’d hate to distract you from your efforts towards eternal life.]
Colin Fraizer
Dec 1 2019 at 6:59pm
BTW, I really appreciated the talk and the extra effort to put out the topic list and the timestamps.
Do you do that kind of thing often? If so, I could give you a program that would let you just type up the list of topics and time offsets (as you did in this case), then feed that list plus the link to the YouTube video and it would spit out the “annotated” (linked) list.
[I put the links on the topic names, but could make the time offsets clickable instead?]
David Henderson
Dec 1 2019 at 7:56pm
Thanks. Yes, I do. I’ll send you my email.
Craig
Dec 1 2019 at 9:10am
Live on coast in Palm Beach County where a fair amount of sugar is grown inland. The coast generally dislikes the sugar industry — red tide.
Still, while the sugar industry does have a lobby and DOES receive subsidy/protection ON NET it is an industry that is highly discriminated against.
In a genuine free market MORE sugar would be grown in South FL. Fully mechanized, bagasse supports power needs of their mills. They produce sugar and cheap electricity (Okeelanta cogeneration plant let’s me buy electricity from Nextera/FPL far less than in NJ) in a market where the government has destroyed the market for sugar in favor of the likes of ADM and high fructose corn syrup.
Craig
Dec 1 2019 at 9:14am
Live on coast in Palm Beach County where a fair amount of sugar is grown inland. The coast generally dislikes the sugar industry — red tide.
Still, while the sugar industry does have a lobby and DOES receive subsidy/protection ON NET it is an industry that is highly discriminated against.
In a genuine free market MORE sugar would be grown in South FL. Fully mechanized, bagasse supports power needs of their mills. They produce sugar and cheap electricity (Okeelanta cogeneration plant let’s me buy electricity from Nextera/FPL far less than in NJ) in a market where the government has materially impacted the market for sugar in favor of the likes of ADM and HFCS.
Jacob Egner
Dec 1 2019 at 4:32pm
You’re a talented and charismatic speaker, David. You come off as very friendly and lively in both video and your posts. Please live forever.
And thanks for the highlight timestamps – very useful.
Colin Fraizer
Dec 1 2019 at 5:09pm
Did you see the link I left in an earlier comment? It makes each item a link to the associated timestamp, so you can jump straight to it.
Jacob Egner
Dec 2 2019 at 9:02pm
Oh, nice! Too bad I didn’t see it in time. Hopefully I’ll be more vigilant next time.
David Henderson
Dec 1 2019 at 5:33pm
Thanks so much, Jacob. You made my day.
Re living forever, I’m trying. We’ll see. 🙂
David Seltzer
Dec 2 2019 at 5:04pm
Really good stuff. I wish this video was available when I was teaching at Loyola. Compacts a semester or two of econ in an hour and forty-five minutes with clarity and good humor.
Comments are closed.