Quotes About Trade

Sometimes you do have to accept your second or third choice in order to avoid an outcome you consider to be even worse.

I want people to see the fact that we've lost millions of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing and globalization. Sometimes images can convey that better.

Every day more Americans watch their jobs being shipped overseas.

One of Britain's big problems throughout history has been that we lust after consumer goods from elsewhere, but our friends overseas have been less enthusiastic about buying things we produce.

My dad was in furniture for 35 years. He got run out of furniture when everything went to China, went overseas. Manufacturing in the country broke down. Everything left.

We're not in the business of taking large operations in the U.S. and moving them overseas.

Every airplane sale overseas generates U.S. jobs.

Sometimes all it takes to connect entrepreneurs to overseas buyers is to get them into the same room.

Naval supremacy means little in an era of free trade when the enemy owns no ships, and even air supremacy is of dubious value when the enemy refuses to line up in red-coated ranks on the battlefield to be mowed down from above.

As the Iberian explorers made their way down the African coast—the Portuguese going around the Horn to East Asia, the Spaniards cutting west to the Americas—both powers had two main goals in mind: finding precious metals and planting sugarcane. (Oh, and spreading the word of God.) The

An enormous semiofficial drug-smuggling operation was established in order to improve Britain's unfavorable balance of payments with China—the direct result of the British love of tea.

Shortly, some pipeline worker or shipfitter would slow down.

Think of the fellow in that play that calls out "My kingdom for a horse" – it would not have been poetry at all, had he said sheep.

So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world.

Money is a side effect of specialization. In a specialized society, most of the things you need, you can't make for yourself. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to live, you have to get it from someone else. How do you get the person who grows the potatoes to give you some? By giving him something he wants in return. But you can't get very far by trading things directly with the people who need them.

The advantage of a medium of exchange is that it makes trade work. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means.

What made the Florentines rich in 1200 was the discovery of new techniques for making the high-tech product of the time, fine woven cloth. What made the Dutch rich in 1600 was the discovery of shipbuilding and navigation techniques that enabled them to dominate the seas of the Far East.

Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade.

Supply and demand is the nature of market risk.

Between January 1993 and March 1994, a total of half a million machetes were imported into my country from various overseas suppliers.

keeps Mexico ticking over

It always amazed me to see American factories in Mexico, so near the border

the NAFTA accord meant that American manufacturing slid into Mexico, crossing the border but not descending very far. In fact, it seemed to be a rule that these companies were determined to stay within hailing distance of the United States, a few minutes' drive for their products to be shipped over the border. Most American factories in Mexico were visible from the US.

And President Clinton's success in concluding the NAFTA accord meant that American manufacturing slid into Mexico, crossing the border but not descending very far. In fact, it seemed to be a rule that these companies were determined to stay within hailing distance of the United States, a few minutes' drive for their products to be shipped over the border. Most American factories in Mexico were visible from the US.