Now, what is the policy? It is, so far as we know, to interfere with the established fiscal policy of this country in order to promote the union of the Empire—that is to say, it is to affect gravely, if not to sap, the foundations of the edifice in order to promote the stability of the structure. (Laughter and cheers.)...Had free trade failed us in the 57 years of experience we have had of it, had we found ourselves with a shrinking trade, a diminished revenue, a population on the verge of poverty, we should long ago have reviewed the whole system of free trade and reconsidered it. But we find ourselves, so far as all statistics can give us a clue, at a pinnacle of wealth such as no nation of the size has ever reached in the history of the world...The Empire is built up on free trade...your Empire is founded on the condition, and it could not have existed until now except on that condition, that every self-governing part of it shall have the right to work out its own prosperity by its own methods. I do not know why it should enter the heads of any statesman to deny that liberty to the United Kingdom.
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Speech to the Liberal League on 12 June 1903, repudiating Chamberlain's proposals, reported in The Times (13 June 1903), p. 8.Archibald Primrose Rosebery
» Archibald Primrose Rosebery - all quotes »
Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few have done so without them. For developing countries, free trade has a rarely been a matter of choice; it was often an imposition from outside, sometimes even through military power. Most of them did very poorly under free trade; they did much better when they used protection and subsidies. The best-performing economies have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradually. Neo-liberal free-trade free-market policy claims to sacrifice equity for growth, but in fact it achieves neither; growth has slowed down in the past two and a half decades when markets were freed and borders opened.
Ha-Joon Chang
We must recognise that in an integrated world, trade cannot be divorced from other concerns. We need to promote free trade and serious global efforts with respect to common problems even as we support every nation's right to chart its own course.
Lawrence Summers
The importance of international trade for economic development cannot be overemphasized. But free trade is not the best path to economic development. Trade helps economic development only when the country employs a mixture of protection and open trade, constantly adjusting it according to its changing needs and capabilities. Trade is simply too important for economic development to be left to free trade economists.
Ha-Joon Chang
A question had been raised in a very powerful speech the other night (cheers), and he was not treating it in any political or critical sense to-night; but it was a topic of so great importance as regarded the existence and the future of the Empire, as regarded the basis on which it was to rest and its ultimate development, that he was sure it was one of the subjects that the chamber of commerce must discuss at a very large meeting. The subject raised in that speech the other night was not a matter of party politics as yet, and in one sense he did not think that it ever would be a matter of politics as affecting politics as at present existing, because it cut across that line diagonally and not by the ordinary separation of English party lines. Another reason why he would not discuss it politically that night was that he would not hastily reject, without mature consideration, any plan offered on high authority and based on large experience for really cementing and uniting the British Empire. (Cheers.)...It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case...how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers.)...He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs...Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade...he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts...he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation.
Archibald Primrose Rosebery
We hear those in the national Congress running around and saying, 'Free trade, free trade, I am for free trade,' when they know free trade is like dry water. There is no such thing.
Ernest Hollings
Rosebery, Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of
Rosen, Michael
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