Where are the invasions, the floods of foreign products that were supposed to kill national labour in Switzerland?

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 58 to 63 (in French)
Mémorial bordelais, March 12th, 1846

This article is essentially presenting a translation of a report in the House of Commons by the representative for Kilmarnock describing the situation in Switzerland. It shows how the population in this country has embraced free-trade despite all the temptations to implement a protectionist regime. The year 1814 is mentionned, when Napoleonic wars frightened the manufacturers about their capacity to face a competition benefiting from protection and the year 1820 is mentionned as well, when protectionism in France created some support for implementing “retaliation”.

The report informs us that Switzerland did not implement tariffs however and that “in all the stores and all the shops in the country, English and French products are available next to ours; they did not pay any tariffs; ours did not benefit from any protection”. Commercial freedom did its wonders in Switzerland – manufacturers had to adapt and find themselves exporting not only to Europe but everywhere in the world. Today’s quote exposes the same old refrain of the protectionists who do not understand that free trade is not a source of idleness on a macroeconomic point of view and that nowhere has it been observed that the labour has been totally destroyed by importations that would have led to the annihilation of production (the best counter-example might have been Greece in the early 21st century but I tend to think that they rather benefitted from “free importations” in the first decade that did not destroy any existing productive capacity – the fall is brutal but the ascent had been artificial).