Trade Quotes

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.

If we take a Vessel of theirs, we get nothing but a bad Vessel fit only to burn, a few Guns and a few Barbarians who we may hang or enslave if We will, and the Unfeeling Tyrants whose Subjects they are will think will think no more of it than if We had killed so many CatterPillars upon an Apple tree. When they take a Vessel of ours, they not only get a rich prize, but they enslave the Men and if there is among them a Man of any Rank or Note, they demand most exorbitant ransoms for them … congress will never, or at least not for years, take any such resolution, and in the meantime our trade and honor suffers beyond calculation. We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.

The country itself is the best I have ever seen for producing all the products of Spain... But what I am sure of is that there is not any gold nor any other metal in all that country

Nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery; and certainly, nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.

Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no products within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce. But the tea, silk and porcelain which the Celestial Empire produces are absolute necessities to European nations and to yourselves, we have permitted, as a signal of our favor, that private hongs should be established at Canton, so that your wants might be supplied and your country thus participate in our beneficence.

At least half of the popular fallacies about economics come from assuming that economic activity is a zero-sum game, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else. But transactions would not continue unless both sides gained, whether in international trade, employment, or renting an apartment.

I forbid any one to sell a man beyond the limits of the country, under penalty of a fine in full to me.

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

The whole of Britain’s international trading system, foreign policy and even Britain’s various conflicting political parties were maintained for one reason; and for one reason alone – that the money power of the world may rule the British people and through them they may rule mankind.

Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.

While we have land to labor, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe.

Economies that are open to trade grow faster.

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighborhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

Let us sell merchandise to the Spanish and obtain from them gold and silver.

Mexican exports worldwide benefit the U.S. economy because of their high percentage of U. S. content.

By definition, by reducing our trade deficit we will be hurting consumers. Consumers are always better off with a trade deficit.

Africa needs access to markets.

When I was a kid, I reckoned things in Hershey bars. Is this worth three Hershey bars to me?

The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle.

Congress shall not have power, without the concurrence of two-thirds of both Houses, to interdict the commercial intercourse between the United States and any foreign nation or the dependencies thereof.

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation much follow him; and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations may by outraged in the process.

Increased trade is crucial to a balanced plan for stimulating growth and job creation on both sides of the Atlantic.

We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then.

Since nothing is free, to each his price.