International trade

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Theory

Collection:: Economics Books

[46 AN Vidg INTERNATIONAL TRADE vantage. The returns to labor and capital in the newly stimu- lated industry are not higher than those current in the country at large. They may indeed be unusually large for a time after the first imposition of the duty; but if the industry be open to competition, they will come to the same level as elsewhere. That level, however, cannot be maintained unless prices of the goods are higher than they would be if imported ; and to the community at large this difference in price represents pure loss. In the case of a protective duty, then, there is a balancing of loss against gain; a loss which is overt and obvious, in the higher price of the goods whose domestic production is stimulated by the duty, and a gain, much less obvious, thru the more favorable terms of trade. There is no way of ascertaining which is the greater — whether the net result is positive or negative. Even- tually the outcome would be affected on the one hand by the extent to which a disadvantageous domestic industry is brought into existence, on the other hand by those conditions of demand which determine the barter terms of trade in general. In the exposition of this subject at the hands of the younger Mill, it was said that no gain at all accrues to a country from pro- tective duties; these being believed to be “purely mischievous, both to the country imposing them and to those with whom it trades.” ! This seems to be an error. If indeed all taxes on im- ports were protective, and if all were pushed so high as to attain unflinchingly the object of protection — domestic production of everything, all imports completely shut out — there would obvi- ously be no gain from international trade, since the trade would cease once for all. But protection is never carried so far. As regards a particular article or group of articles, importation may indeed be entirely stopped. But other articles continue to come in, perhaps in large volume. There are many goods, such as the tropical products extensively used by the people of temperate zones, which it is so difficult to produce at home that an applica- tion of the protective policy to them is admittedly preposterous. 1 See Mill’s Essays on Some Unsettled Questions, pp. 21 seq., and his Political Economy, Book 5, Ch. 4, section 6.

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