Commonplace: Bad Arguments

It is said that the most advantageous of all branches of trade is that in which one exchanges manufactured goods for raw materials. For these raw materials are the staff of life for domestic labor.

Hence, the conclusion is drawn that the best tariff law would be the one that would most facilitate the importation of raw materials and would erect the most obstacles to the entry of finished goods.

There is, in political economy, no sophism more widely accepted than this. It is dear not only to the protectionist school but also, and above all, to the self-styled liberal school; and this is regrettable, for the worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.

Freedom of exchange will probably share the fate of freedom in general: it will become a part of our laws only after having taken possession of our minds. But if it is true that a reform must be generally accepted in order to be firmly established, it follows that nothing can delay it so much as that which misleads public opinion; and what is better fitted to mislead it than works that, while advocating free trade, are themselves based on the doctrines of monopoly?

Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms (Foundation for Economic Education, 1968), 107.