Neoliberalism is not a failure but a starting point

What happens when you go overboard and criticize free trade and open markets without any sound basis in history? You look mostly like a fool. Protectionism never works no matter how Hamiltonian you make it look. James Surowiecki takes apart the Chang counterfactual.

At the same time, though, Bad Samaritans is not ultimately convincing, particularly when it comes to the solutions it proffers. In part, that’s because Chang’s definition of what matters in an economy is strangely narrow, focused almost entirely on some Platonic notion of the “nation” rather than on the people who actually live in it. There are few businessmen, few workers, and almost no consumers in Bad Samaritans: Individuals appear mainly as factors in a nation’s productive enterprises. Now, in one respect, this is not surprising: Macroeconomists write about macroeconomies, and the nation-state remains, even in the age of globalization, a fundamental economic unit. But Chang’s resolutely statist vision of the world necessarily leads him to under­estimate the costs and overrate the benefits of protectionism.

Meanwhile, some of us should take a cue from the estimable Russ Nelson. There's a reason America's the freest country on earth.