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Acknowledgements: For useful discussions and suggestions I would like to thank, without implication, two anonymous referees, Ben Zissimos, John Weymark, John Vrooman, John Siegfried, Dani Rodrik, Marc Muendler, Paul McNelis, Ramon Marimon, Andrea Maneschi, John Oneal, Larry Karp, Joseph Frankenfield, Jonathan Eaton, Mario Crucini, Robert Chirinko, Bill Collins, John Conley, Eric Bond, members of the Fordham University Jesuit Scholastics Social Action Seminar, the Economics Faculty of the European University Institute, and numerous commentators on Dani Rodrik's blog.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Deconstruction: In popular usage the term has come to mean a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought. See also postmodernism; poststructuralism.
Economists' views on free trade are more synchronous than on almost any other policy question: they almost universally support free trade as a policy. For example, Alan Blinder wrote in 2007:
Like 99% of economists since the days of Adam Smith, I am a free trader down to my toes.1
Other economists have noted this widespread consensus as well. Carlos Diaz-Alejandro (1975) wrote about '. . . the ultra-pro-trade-biased obiter dicta of the professional mainstream . . .' And Magee (1975), in writing about why researchers might have a subconscious desire for empirical justification of an assumption of satisfaction of the Marshall-Lerner conditions, noted:
Since most international economists are free traders . . .
And Mankiw (2008) wrote:
Economists are, overwhelmingly, free traders. A 2006 poll of Ph.D. members of the American Economic Association found that 87.5 percent agreed that 'the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade'.
This remarkable consensus spans over two centuries, having held together through enormous changes in the foundations of economic analysis. The claim I make here is that, in light of the apparent settled nature of economists' judgement on the issue of trade liberalization, the profession has stopped thinking critically about the question and, as a consequence, makes poor-quality arguments justifying their consensus. That is, this consensus is now an institution that, like some other institutions, can best be described as 'centuries of tradition, unmarred by progress'.2
To develop support for this claim, I first recount what economic analysis can say about trade liberalization. Then I analyse the quality of the arguments that economists make...