Clarifications on the Case for Free Trade by Paul Craig Roberts [Posted January 10, 2004] Free trade has necessary conditions. Today these conditions are not met. This point has escaped Joe Salerno and George Reisman (both writing on Mises.org), as it has a vast number of other people. The case for free trade is based on David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. Ricardo addressed the question how trade could take place between country A and country B (England and Portugal in his example) if country B was more efficient in the production of tradable goods (cloth and wine in his example) than...