Economic Isolationism Quotes

Our self-imposed isolation in the matter of markets, and the decline of our shipping interest in the last thirty years, have coincided singularly with an actual remoteness of this continent from the life of the rest of the world.

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

We do not need to import any foreign economic ideas or any foreign government. We had better stick to the American brand of government, the American brand of equality, and the American brand of wages. America had better stay American

Hand in hand with nationalist economic isolationism, militarism struggles to maintain the sovereign state against the forward march of internationalism.

Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure.

Policies aimed at reversing globalization will lead only to a decrease in real income as goods become more expensive.

Opposing the free flow of goods or people is a bad idea.

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

The United States can't keep a completely open system if the rest of the world is less open. The United States may have to take a leaf out of the book of Japan, China, and Germany, and have protectionism inside the system.

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.

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.

In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.

I denounce the policy of protection as bondage.

With the election of Trump, America's soft power has taken a big hit. The United States has moved from a position of leadership in the creation of a rules-based international system to a position of leadership in its destruction and the creation of a regime of global protectionism. The damage will be long-lasting.

Smoot and Hawley ginned up The Tariff Act of 1930 to get America back to work after the Stock Market Crash of '29. Instead, it destroyed trade so effectively that by 1932, American exports to Europe were just a third of what they had been in 1929. World trade fell two-thirds as other nations retaliated. Jobs evaporated.

Internal protectionism in Europe would be deadly, really a disaster for European economies.

What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

It's just so unfortunate that, as we get adjusted to this global economy, that the U.S. is even thinking about building walls.

National self-sufficiency or "autarchy" is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.

The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.

One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce. They admit me a friend of agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.

I think it's a message of economic nationalism. It's obviously one that has bubbled up before in certain pockets, but it's never been the sort of powerful phenomenon that it is today.

To advance his administration's agenda with its protectionism and cultural nationalism, Donald Trump needs to spread the notion that the polyglot metropolis is a dangerous failure.