There’s Nothing Free about ‘Free Trade’

April 10, 2025 by J.B. Shurk

President Trump, Treasury secretary Bessent, and Commerce secretary Lutnick are effectively teaching a course right now on the fundamentals of international trade. How many Americans previously understood that nations around the world use tariffs and other economic tools to keep American-made products from reaching their markets? Hasn’t the United States been spreading the gospel of “free trade” for centuries? Doesn’t commitment to “free markets” separate the civilizational West from more authoritarian countries with “closed” economies? Shouldn’t a “rules-based international order” ensure that the rules are the same for all participating countries?

Or asked another way: How “free” can international trade be if its proponents depend upon a labyrinthine system of rules that requires thousand-page treaties and guidance from the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, central banks galore, the Bank for International Settlements, international standards organizations, law firms specializing in commercial and maritime law, more law firms specializing in the administrative law of specific nations, even more law firms specializing in the labor and environmental laws of each nation, and an ever-increasing number of national and international regulatory bodies to tell producers what they can and cannot produce, how and when to produce what they are permitted to produce, and whom to pay for the “privilege” of producing it — all while restricting which domestic consumers around the world are permitted to purchase what the aforementioned producers end up producing?

That long question only scratches the surface of the sheer complexity of international trade, yet even in its oversimplification, it smacks of coercion, extortion, overbearing micromanagement, government corruption, and blatant racketeering. It oozes the “command and control” odor we associate with a Soviet-type, socialist, or similarly centrally planned economy. Nothing about “free trade” in practice sounds remotely free.

With the Trump/Bessent/Lutnick tariff tutorial currently being broadcast from the White House, millions of Americans are learning for the first time that the United States operates within an international market system that does not impose reciprocal entry costs. That is to say, countries around the world collect fees from American producers before they are allowed to sell their goods in those markets, while the U.S. typically charges foreign producers much less — or nothing at all.

Since the conclusion of WWII, the United States has directly subsidized Europe through various forms of a Marshall Plan, originally meant to help Europe rebuild after the war by restricting American competitors from selling in Europe while encouraging European producers to sell in the United States. Was the Marshall Plan necessary to resurrect Europe’s economy? Perhaps — although many economists have argued that it so distorted market incentives that Europe’s economy is much less strong today than it otherwise would be. Regardless, most Americans have been intentionally kept in the dark that this two-tiered system of trans-Atlantic trade has persisted for eighty years.

Europe is not alone in benefiting from “rules-based” trade advantages with the United States. The U.S. handcuffs its producers in numerous ways. If some country within America’s sphere of influence depends upon a particular agricultural crop or mineral export to sustain its national standard of living, then there is almost certainly a paragraph tucked away in the thirteenth section of the fifty-ninth chapter of some fourteen-hundred-page international treaty making it more difficult for American producers to grow, mine, ship, or sell that product to the other country’s detriment. That’s one form of what foreign policy snobs like to call “soft power.” It’s a way for the United States to exert influence by effectively saying, “If you do what we say, we’ll prop up your nation’s economy. And if you’re really obedient, the U.S. Agency for International Development or the National Endowment for Democracy will throw a little cold, hard cash at your political leaders.”

Now, if you’re building empires, that might be a splendid tactic. It is an inexpensive way to expand American power around the world. It fosters the image that the United States respects the sovereignty of individual nation-states while creating the conditions for the U.S. government to hold a nation’s economic future in its hands. No doubt many of the countries that have flourished under America’s security umbrella are far better off today than they would have been had they become vassal states to the Soviet Union last century or communist China this century. Nonetheless, this kind of manipulation of international trade comes at a cost to any American farmer or entrepreneur who is hamstrung due to the State Department’s “soft power” games.

There is a strange — and perhaps quite dangerous — disconnect between the way most Americans see their country and the way the U.S. government actually operates. A reasonable, patriotic American believes that the United States is a great and powerful country with unique influence on the world stage. Yet citizens still see it as a nation with distinct borders, a distinct culture, distinct interests, and a distinct Constitution that limits federal powers while ensuring that the American people are ably represented in their government. The U.S. government, on the other hand, sees itself as the international headquarters of a global empire that has no borders; includes all cultures; pursues competing interests; acts without constitutional constraint; and represents international banks, corporations, and institutions with no allegiance to the political culture, historical inheritance, or territorial sovereignty of the United States.

The result of this disconnect is striking: While the American people expect their government to do what’s best for them and their country, the U.S. government does what’s best for itself and the expansion of its empire. If international companies can profit from illegal immigration, then the federal government will ignore its own immigration laws and even fly illegal aliens into the United States. If international banks can profit from slave labor manufacturing in communist China, then the federal government will outsource entire industries to its geopolitical enemy. If the European Union and the World Economic Forum can use U.S. military and economic support to create totalitarian systems of control across the continent, then the federal government will spend itself to financial death in order to sustain the “New World Order’s” globalist hegemony.

Americans didn’t vote for open borders, endless wars, forty trillion dollars of debt, or a hollowed out economy dependent on overseas slave labor. The U.S. government ignored their wishes and the limits of its constitutional powers and constructed a global empire anyway.

In truth, the American empire hasn’t been interested in “free trade” since at least WWI. The Great War, coincidentally enough, started roughly six months after the Federal Reserve System was forced upon the American public in a corrupt congressional vote two days before Christmas 1913. The creation of a “central bank” was a dead giveaway that markets would henceforth be controlled. Nothing that is centralized can be said to operate according to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” From that point on, central bankers chose the “winners” and “losers” in the American economy, and “free trade” became a euphemism that global oligarchs whispered to the American people while stealing every last cent from their pockets.

Before the Federal Reserve, Americans had gold-backed currency, owned real property, paid little in taxes, and moved up the social ladder faster than anywhere else in the world. Since the imposition of a central bank, fiat dollars have lost most of their value, banks own most Americans’ homes, American tax obligations have exploded, and indebted workers are less well off than their parents.

President Trump’s tariff policy is only the beginning. He is setting the stage for the end of the income tax, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve. Getting there requires unshackling the American economy and unleashing Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit.