What Is Free Trade? — Frédéric Bastiat
The Langenderfer Library: Classics in Tax, Economics, and AccountingShow Notes
What does free trade actually require—and why does Bastiat believe protection harms the people it claims to help? In this concise defense of commercial liberty, Frédéric Bastiat dismantles common arguments for tariffs by tracing how restrictions raise prices, shelter inefficient producers, and force consumers to sacrifice for politically favored interests.
Through vivid examples and economic reasoning, Bastiat explains comparative cost, specialization, competition, and the unseen burdens of protection. The result is both an accessible introduction to classical trade theory and a broader case for voluntary exchange, consumer welfare, and equal treatment under the law.
More from The Langenderfer Library: Classics in Tax, Economics, and Accounting
Who really pays local property taxes—the legal taxpayer, the tenant, the landowner, or the consumer? Lawson Purdy examines how taxes on land and buildings affect rents, property values, development, and the distribution of municipal burdens.
How should a nation distribute the heavy fiscal burden left by war? Alfred Marshall evaluates income taxation, taxes on capital and expenditure, and duties on imports while weighing revenue needs against equity, saving, production, and economic recovery.
How should local taxes be distributed, and who ultimately bears rates imposed on land, houses, and other property? Francis Y. Edgeworth answers questions posed by Britain’s Royal Commission on Local Taxation, translating principles of incidence and equitable sacrifice into practical policy analysis.
What role should an income tax play in repairing state revenue systems? Thomas S. Adams examines the weaknesses of the general property tax and considers how income taxation can improve fairness, reach forms of wealth that escape assessment, and provide a more workable basis for public revenue.
What determines the distribution of national income among workers, capitalists, and landowners? David Ricardo develops a systematic account of value, wages, profits, rent, trade, money, and taxation—placing distribution at the center of political economy.