Great article. Free trade is not complicated. As the word “free” means absent restraint or force and the word “trade” means to freely exchange items. I am not sure how anyone could be opposed to that. The alternative is to have an exchange of items compelled by force or restrained by force.
Since private citizens are not allowed to use force on each other to compel a preferred exchange of items they turn to the government to enforce their preferred outcomes. Many Freepers seem to know just how much is “fair” for tires, steel, appliances, and etc.. and they are willing to empower the government to enforce their wisdom.
Why would anybody use China as an examples of the failure of “free trade”. Free trade does not occur with China. NAFTA is another great example. Derided on FR quite frequently I must ermine people that “free” does not require 1,000s of pages of rules and regulations.
To that degree, many FReepers are Socialists.
If that's true here, where freedom and representative government are supposed to be paramount as the title of the website suggests, that doesn't bode well for the rest of society? If they are that confused here, how confused is the rest of society?