BOOK REVIEW: World peace through world trade

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By William H. Peterson

MAD ABOUT TRADE: WHY MAIN STREET AMERICA SHOULD EMBRACE GLOBALIZATION

By Daniel Griswold

Cato Institute. $24.95, 205 pages

Reviewed by William H. Peterson

Advised Ludwig von Mises in 1922: "The slogan 'Away With Foreign Goods!' would lead us, if we accepted all its implications, to abolish the division of labor altogether. For the principle that makes 'international' division of labor seem advantageous is precisely the principle which recommends division of labor in any case."

Rising trade, division of labor and globalization are advancing Main Street America, writes Daniel Griswold of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. He hails the advance and presses for still more growth-oriented, peaceful trade via competitive imports. This despite some persistent American push for protectionism, including demands to "Buy American."

Case in point of the latter is the Lou Dobbs 2004 book "Exporting America," in which CNN-TV host Mr. Dobbs dismisses worries for consumers, saying, "I don't think helping consumers save a few cents on trinkets and T-shirts is worth the loss of American jobs." Too, then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2007 echoed this very fear before a cheering union audience that people "don't want a cheaper T-shirt if they're losing a job in the process."

Mr. Griswold writes: "Like many other politicians, Barack Obama favors 'the noisy producer interests over the silent, suffering consumer.' " But why hit consumption at all?

The author reminds us that consumption is life itself, that without it, we perish, fast, and that "production divorced from consumption is akin to slavery." He invokes Adam Smith's classic 1776 book, "The Wealth of Nations," to pose our dilemma, as true now as it was then:

"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promotion of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to prove it. But in the mercantile system [analogous to U.S. protectionism today] the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce."