James Baker Quotes

Protectionism is a very real danger. It is understandable that in times of a severe downturn protectionist pressures mount but the lessons of history are clear. If we give in to protectionist pressures, we will only send the world into a downward spiral.

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

The arguments for protection are more easily made attractive than those for free trade.

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

The thing that we have to worry about is this protectionist movement that has reared its head again in this country

Trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ...We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form

When the new states of Europe were created by the Treaty of Versailles their new governments, lacking revenue and not daring to impose direct taxes on their people, resorted to the dangerous expedient of imposing high taxes at the border on merchandise seeking to enter their markets from abroad. An immediate slowing down of commerce resulted.

Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.

We can do a much better job free of protectionist Europeans.

I worry about protectionists, which is another way of saying less competition, less trade around the world. And I view those as twins of negativity.

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.

These agreements should be free trade. They aren’t free trade.

Liberalization of trade barriers are essential for long-term global growth.

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

I never was a free-trader. I never felt that we could ... do away with all protective devices, because we would have been flooded with imports which would have hurt our economy.

Our nation has moved from the cold war to the trade war.

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.

When you lower trade barriers and level the playing field, you create a mutual pool of wealth.

Perhaps the globalization potion is too strong for us today; it should be watered down with some measure of economic nationalism.

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

It has been proved again and again that we cannot, while throwing our markets open to the world, maintain American standards of living and opportunity, and hold our industrial eminence in such unequal competition. There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports.

It must become a nation of free traders, which would throw open its ports to the world, and prove to European nations that the colonial system of restriction and monopoly was founded on delusion

Free trade is always vulnerable to democratic politics.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all used temporarily targeted tariffs on specific industries.

Protectionism is something that will hurt everybody, but especially the United States.