From Politics to Technocracy—and Back Again: The Fate of the Multilateral Trading Regime

Abstract

As is known to every student of trade law and policy, the modern idea of free trade originates from the theories of absolute and comparative advantage developed by the classical political economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Smith and Ricardo both addressed themselves to a sovereign unilaterally deciding its trade policy. They concluded that, with some qualifications or exceptions, a policy of liberalizing restrictions on imports would maximize the wealth of that sovereign.