Trade is a vital and growing area of international interaction. Free trade is good for consumers, but it can harm particular industries that then lobby to be protected against “unfair” competition. Tariffs and other barriers to trade tend to increase the price of goods and services, creating artificial scarcity in exchange for domestic political gains. Every country can benefit from free trade even if a country’s producers are not the best at making anything. Everyone and every place has a comparative advantage in something. Specialization in producing the goods and services in which one has comparative advantage leads to efficient production. This means that there are more total goods in the marketplace, and they are available at a generally cheaper price. Protection distorts that efficiency by trading away economic advantage for localized, domestic political advantages.

Domestic political pressures encourage the private good of protectionism especially when the regime depends on a small coalition of backers. But protectionism is rarely good for the general economy. The measure of trade receptivity (OPENC), for instance, is positively and significantly associated with economic growth, as is dependence on a large coalition. Protectionist economies grow more slowly and especially leave poorer people worse off. The logic of economics encourages free trade. Domestic politics pushes against it—more weakly in democracies than in autocracies.