20 - Douglas Irwin on Free Trade, the Gold Standard, and American Economic History

Douglas Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth College and author of Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton University Press, 2015), joins the show to discuss the economic arguments for free trade and the reasons for the heated politics surrounding trade. He describes the history of U.S. trade policy from the Embargo Act of 1808 to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Finally, he and David discuss the role of the inter-war gold standard during the Great Depression. [To learn more about the upcoming conference, Monetary Rules for a Post-Crisis World, co-hosted by the Mercatus Center and the Cato Institute, and register, please click the link below. You can also watch the conference online by clicking the link.] http://mercatus.org/monetaryconference?utm_source=MacroMusingsPodcast&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=MonetaryRules David’s blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/ Douglas Irwin’s homepage: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/ David’s Twitter: @davidbeckworth Douglas Irwin’s Twitter: @D_A_Irwin Related links: “The Truth About Trade: What Critics Get Wrong About the Global Economy” (Foreign Affairs) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-06-13/truth-about-trade Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton University Press, fourth edition 2015) https://www.amazon.com/Free-Trade-under-Fire-Fourth/dp/0691166250 “The Welfare Cost of Autarky: Evidence from the Jeffersonian Trade Embargo,” 1807-09. Review of International Economics. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/docs/Embargo.pdf “Did France Cause the Great Depression?” (NBER Working Paper) http://www.nber.org/papers/w16350