“Free trade favors the country that practices it and makes it richer relative to countries that do not.”
We had tariffs from 1789 to 1913, so according to you we did NOT practice free trade; and yet we got richer and richer and richer and by 1900 became the richest, highest paying, highest standard of living in the world.
How does that econ history fit your theory?
“If all countries practice free trade the country whose people innovate will be richer than the others. That is the USA. “
No it isn’t.
“Read Hazlitt and learn something. “
Read it already. Read American history and use your brain.
Smoot-Hawley was a tariff act to protect American business. It turned an economic downturn into a decade long Depression that killed many American businesses. The economy did not recover until Eisenhower got the FDR regulations and much of the tariffs removed. We can turn the current depression into a permanent third world conversion by instituting a new protective tariff regime. I suppose you would love that because our enemies and competitors would suffer, too.