We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade.

The economic illusion is the belief that social justice is bad for economic growth.

Not surprisingly, extensive effort in Britain and America goes into finding tax shelter. the system is "efficient" for the shelter industry, not for the economy.

Henry Ford, in a sense, was the first Keynesian. He paid his assembly workers high wages so they could afford to buy his cars.

For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance.

If Boeing got a big head start on the 707 from multibillion-dollar military contracts to develop an air force transport, is that a sin against free trade?

As a scholarly discipline, economics has always suffered from physics envy.