Questioning Free Trade: It's P.C.

If you question whether global warming is happening, or whether human activity is causing it, or whether it’s worth doing anything about it, then you must be a crack-pot. You are standing athwart the “consensus of scientists.” You are disputing “settled science.” You are a “global warming denier,” the moral equivalent of an apologist for the Nazi holocaust.

But no such accusations are made against the protectionists who question the benefits of free trade among nations, deny the manifest evidence of its success, or challenge its status as a human right. Such people are in fact standing athwart 250 years of economics, and an overwhelming consensus of living economists. These protectionists are denying the enormous gains in standards of living and human freedom that are the direct result of free global trade.

Question the global warming consensus and you’re something between a fool and a Nazi. But question free trade? Ah … that’s different. That’s politically correct.

Read more here from Donald Luskin's article "A Convenient (and Excellent) Truth. The benefits of free trade are settled science. (Although that won’t stop the deniers.)