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WTO on verge of collapse?

We are being warned that the World Trade Organisation is on the verge of collapse, which would result in the loss of a mechanism for settling trade disputes. What has not been noticed is that these trade disputes would not arise if governments were not hell-bent on pursuing mercantilist policies to the detriment of their own people. Mercantilism  had been utterly discredited several times over before 1800 but it refuses to die. It is as if present day doctors still insisted in treating serious infections with leeches.

In this situation the best policy for any government is to look after its own people and not get in the way of inward trade so that its citizens are able to purchase the goods they want, from whoever they want, wherever they are, on the best terms they can obtain. Any interference is a denial of the basic human right of people freely to exchange goods and services on mutually agreed terms.
If the governments of other countries do not reciprocate, the main losers are their own people. The remedy is then in their hands: to get rid of the politicians who are harming them.

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