Comparative Advantage Quotes

Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?

Economies that are open to trade grow faster.

I still have drive, but everything is relative.

I'm quite an advocate of free trade.

Obviously it's easier to grow faster when you are a less developed country than when you are where the U.S. is.

United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that's what it's good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary.

People are always trading their excess for somebody else's excess. One country has a lot of aluminum so they trade aluminum for sugar. It's the law of supply and demand.

People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs.

Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice

The ultimate benefit of trade is not the generating of economic surpluses but the more efficient allocation of economic resources.

It is quite plausible that the process of increased fragmentation of production across borders is subject to 'diminishing returns' and has its natural limits.

If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.

Don't make such a big deal out of this trade deficit…. In the United States you cannot find anybody to produce such labor-intensive products and it will be more expensive if you were to import such products from other countries and the regions than China. Only China is in the best position to produce such products, and this is also beneficial to China because this has provided job opportunities to China.

You cannot strengthen one by weakening another; and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the leg of a giant.

Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient.

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage.

If Mexican farm labor is so much cheaper, maybe we should be growing our fruits and vegetables in Mexico. There's absolutely no reason to import Mexicans to do something they could do at home and then sell to us. I believe this is what economists call "competitive advantage".

We are in favor of free trade.

Even in these difficult times we face, there is not one nation on Earth that would not want to trade places with us.

The proposed tariff is a tax to be levied principally on the great body of agriculturalists who constitute a large majority of the American people and who are the chief consumers of foreign imports... Instead of struggling against the dictates of reason and nature, and madly trying to produce everything at home, countries should study to direct their labors ...to things for which they are best adapted. ... We ask no tax on manufacturers for our benefit.

Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they're good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market.

We could have managed globalization in ways that ordinary citizens would have benefited rather than just the corporations. Trade is beneficial. There are gains to be had from taking advantage of comparative advantage and specialization. That's true, if you manage globalization right.

The commerce of India does not grow, nor does that of Portugal, or of Turkey; that but that of the protected countries does increase, as has been shown in the case of Spain, and can now be shown in that of Germany.

In the broad and sweeping sense which the use of the term generally implies, I am not a free-trader.