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The article contains some interesting points but overlooks several points. Ricardo was not the first advocate of free trade but followed some decades after Adam Smith's attack on Mercantilism.

While the complaint about the shrinking manufacturing base is rather old there is no mention of the fact that services have been becoming a larger portion of the economy for a hundred years. Complaining about this decline is no more sensible than complaining about the declining share of agriculture. These trends are not going to be reversed.

We are seeing great changes in the products themselves as products are using less and less material within them and energy to operate them. This is almost a spiritualization of commodities of which the computer is an excellent example. What was once a machine the size of a room is now small enough to carry around or even smaller.

Roberts' discussion of the mobilization of international factors is one that is difficult to carry on here. Highly technical methods would be necessary to do it justice.