Free trade is necessary in order to provide economic security, Professor of Economics at Kalamazoo College Julia Cartwright said in a speech last Thursday.

Her speech, hosted by Hillsdale’s Praxis economics group, was titled “Economic Failures of National Conservatism.”

“There are three economic problems that we want to solve: what is produced, how it is produced, and who gets those goods,” she said.

The solution to the allocation of these goods is the price system, which is ultimately the result of the individual, Cartwright said. 

“Neither free trade nor protectionism create jobs,” Cartwright said. “But entrepreneurs do.”

Cartwright talked about the importance of depending upon others in society to provide goods for one another, saying it is impossible to live in an autarkic society, or a society in which people operate as individuals rather than as a whole.

Instead, people must trade with and be dependent on one another for goods and services.

Associate Professor of Economics Charles Steele said he appreciated Cartwright’s discussion of “autarky” and its importance to economics. 

“The idea is that this is a link to poverty,” Steele said.

Trade allows for these people to do the things they are good at and contribute to the economy in a positive way, Cartwright said. 

Cartwright discussed the importance of technology in the trade market and argued that rather than replacing jobs, it adds more jobs to a given field.

“I think this is a point that’s really important because you take the point about technology,” Steele said. “If you want to stop technological advance – which is another way of saying, ‘Do I kill people?’ – you cannot sustain the population that we have in the world or the United States if we go back to 18th century technology, no way.”

Steele said he agrees with Cartwright’s observations that technology increases the number of jobs in the field.

“People think of technology as a job killer. It’s not,” Steele said. “We look at any of the statistics and whenever you look at the historical record, when you get technological advancement, you suddenly have more opportunities than there were before.”

Cartwright also discussed the place of tariffs in the economy, arguing that they cause harm.

“Tariffs help some and hurt others,” Cartwright said. “They make the supply chain more fragile, in that interacting with supply chains in this way makes them less robust.”

Cartwright said contrary to popular thought, tariffs do not necessarily secure high-paying American jobs. 

Freshman Alex Mooney attended the speech and said he appreciated Cartwright’s argument but disagrees with her ideas on free trade. 

“For me, it was a good way of laying out the arguments, but it didn’t change my view,” Mooney said. “I oppose the position of the speaker pretty strongly, but I thought it was a good way of laying it out and seeing the other side.”

Mooney said he understands why people support free trade but does not entirely support it himself.

“I think the arguments for free trade are logically sound if you take into account the assumption that you have a strong system where the people are engaging freely and fairly,” Mooney said. “Where I think free trade is eroding nowadays, is in the erosion of those assumptions. So I’m not entirely sure if theoretical free trading is entirely possible.”