Frank B. Brandegee Quotes

Before we move forward with new efforts to lower the barriers to international free trade, we must review the consequences of the policies of the past and address the problems of the present.

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down.

A liberal economy doesn’t mean opening wide the doors for imports.

Demanding freedom of access to other markets isn't protectionism, it's free trade.

Were our narrow and malignant politics [protectionism] to meet with success, we should reduce all our neighboring nations to the same state of sloth and ignorance that prevails in Morocco and the coast of Barbary.

Those who whine incessantly and maintain the romantic notion of a self-contained market speak against the interests of American workers and a growing standard of living. They are trafficking in fear and promoting ignorance while advancing their own political ambitions. No great nation has ever increased its worth over time by closing its markets. In fact, history is replete with examples of closed markets leading to destructive economic consequences.

I want to go get trade agreements because if America walls itself up, if we address sort of an economic fortress America, we will lose.

When America closes its doors, so does everybody else. We are the primary engine of growth in the world and we are the only beacon of free trade left, and open markets.

Europe should stick to an open economy, to competition and we should refuse protectionism. It will not save one single job in the long run to protect non-competitive industries.

Every nation has to follow a certain policy: Commercial, trade, various other types of policies.

The closest we can come to free trade is illuminating the barriers to free trade.

I am utterly opposed to anything which will alter the Free Trade character of this country.

We're the only dinosaurs left who maintain that the myth of "free trade" really exists.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

[We must] teach the advocates for an open trade the folly as well as degradation of their policy.

I denounce the policy of protection as bondage.

May our exports be so great, and our imports so small, that the balance of trade may be in our favor.

The countries that stand to benefit most from greater competition and openness are those nations that display the highest protection.

While protectionism doesn’t work, pure free trade doesn’t work either.

Belief in the panacea-like qualities of free trade amounts to ‘collective insanity’.

I personally do not believe in protection mechanisms. It’s like a false friend. It makes you believe that you can compete, but you can’t compete and as the protection mechanisms fall away—the world is going for this—then you are in trouble.

Free trade is hard to sell politically.

Free trade is always vulnerable to democratic politics.

There are some who want to move us back to the days when we were protectionists and keep all goods off our shores.

The idea that you could send agricultural products to Tokyo and Osaka and not pay tariffs, and you would have to pay tariffs sending them to Manchester, is quite hard to fathom in the modern world.