"Now, while free trade should be embraced..."

"Now, while free trade should be embraced, foreign aid should be absolutely rejected.  Constitutional, moral, and practical arguments compel such a view.  Constitutional authorization for such programs is at best dubious.  Morally, I cannot justify the violent seizure of property from Americans in order to redistribute that property to a foreign government- and usually one that is responsible for the appalling material condition of its people.  Surely we can agree that Americans ought not to be doing forced labor on behalf of other regimes, and that is exactly what foreign aid is.

For people who find arguments like these abstract and remote, there is a more practical argument against foreign aid.  International welfare has not worked any better than domestic welfare, despite the trillions spent in each case.  Foreign aid, however pure the intentions that may have motivated it, has been a reactionary device by which truly loathsome leaders have been strengthened and kept in power.  Trillions of dollars later, the results of development aid programs are so bad that even the New York Times, which admits nothing, has acknowledged that the programs haven't worked.  No wonder Kenyan economist James Shikwati, when asked about development aid programs to Africa, has been telling the West, "For God's sake, please just stop." " - Page 99 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"To establish genuine free trade, no such transfer of power..."

"To establish genuine free trade, no such transfer of power is necessary.  True free trade does not require treaties or agreements between governments.  On the contrary, true freed trade occurs in the absence of government intervention in the free flow of goods across borders.  Organizations like the WTO and NAFTA represent government-managed trade schemes, not free trade.  The WTO, purported to exist to lower tariffs, is actually the agency that grants permission for tariffs to be applied when complaints of dumping are levied.  Government-managed trade is inherently political, meaning that politicians and bureaucrats determine who wins and loses in the marketplace. 

Granting quasi-governmental international bodies the power to make decisions about American trade rules compromises American sovereignty in dangerous and unacceptable ways."  -Pages 96 & 97 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"In my strong support for free trade, I have felt compelled to..."

"In my strong support for free trade, I have felt compelled to oppose many of the trade agreements that have appeared in recent years.  For instance, although I was not in Congress at the time, I opposed both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, both of which were heavily favored by the political establishment.  Initial grounds for suspicion was the sheer length of the text of these agreements: no free-trade agreement need to be 20,000 pages long." -Page 95 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Frederic Bastiat once wrote a satirical petition...."

"Frederic Bastiat once wrote a satirical petition to the French parliament on behalf of candle makers and related industries.  He was seeking relief from "ruinous competition of a foreign rival who works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price."  The "foreign rival" he was speaking of was the sun, which was unfairly giving away light for free.  The relief sought was a law requiring the closing of all blinds to shut out the sunlight and thereby stimulate the domestic candle industry.  That is what so many fallacious arguments against free trade amount to." -Page 95 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Prosperity comes not just from economic freedom at home..."

"Prosperity comes not just from economic freedom at home, but also from the freedom to trade abroad.  If free trade were not beneficial, it would make sense for us to "protect jobs" by buying only those goods produced entirely in our own towns.  Or we could purchase only those goods produced on the streets where we live.  Better still, we could restrict our purchases to things we produced in our own households, buying all our products only from our own immediate family members.  When the logic of trade restriction is taken to its natural conclusion, its impoverishing effects become too obvious to miss." -Pages 94 & 95 of The Revolution, A ManifestoF

"I have never understood this talk of our military presence as a..."

"I have never understood this talk of our military presence as a "strategic reserve of Western civilization."  Instead, the best indication of our civilization has been our prestige in international trade.  We should let the best measure of our American greatness come from free and peaceful trade with other nations, not from displays of our military might." -Page 37 of The Revolution, A Manifesto