Roepke Was For Free Trade

by Clifford F. Thies

     In his latest piece arguing against NAFTA, Patrick Buchanan contrasts
two great Austrian economists, Wilhelm Roepke and Ludvig von Mises. 
According to Buchanan, von Mises (and the economists who today recommend
approval of NAFTA) worshipped the false god of efficiency, while Roepke
did not.

     Might I point out that Roepke, like von Mises, and like every other
reputable economist who ever lived, advocated free trade, and disdained
protectionists like Buchanan?

     On page 170 of the English translation of his book "Economics of a
Free Society" Roepke writes "...the economist's task is a truly ungrateful
one.  Having in view the welfare of his country is to explain
dispassionately the nature and functions of free trade.  However, the
effort to reveal the inanity of the arguments which are invoked in favor
of sealing up the country economically, and to expose the superstition
behind the fear of an unfavorable balance of trade is one which generally
meets with a peculiarly disappointing response."

     Thus, according to Buchanan's own source, Buchanan reveals his own
inanity and superstitousness in opposing free trade.

     Pointing out Buchanan's pin-headedness isn't the only reason why I
write.  Buchanan says that those who advocate free trade believe in
"economics uber alles," the obvious reference being to the Nazi slogan
"fatherland above all."

     Roepke's book was originally published in 1936, just before the Nazis
took over in Austria.  The Gestapo soon thereafter broke into the
warehouse of the book's publisher, and confiscated the copies there.  The
book, along with its author, and the other free market economists of
Austria, most of whom were Jewish, were lucky to survive the Nazi era. 
Roepke and Mises fled to Switzerland, and Frederich Hayek, later awarded
the Nobel Prize in Economics, fled to England.

     For Buchanan to use Nazi terminology to describe economists who
advocate free trade, including Roepke, von Mises and Hayek, proves that
Buchanan, in addition to being inane and superstitious, is also a boorish
lout.

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