China vs World as Trade War Comes Closer – General
business.timesonline.co.uk — "WHEN some foreign nation restrains ... the importation of some of our manufactures ... revenge naturally dictates retaliation.”
It sounds like some trade-union protectionist, but actually this was written by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, the bible of free traders. And once restrictions are installed, “freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations” to avoid throwing lots of people out of work.
Smith, of course, saw retaliation as a means of forcing a trading partner to end its restrictions in a process of mutual disarmament. Now, that process is played out in the World Trade Organisation and against a background of mounting Sino-US geopolitical rivalry.












