The Humanity of Trade —
Benefits More Than Fiscal
Posted by Don Mathews
The Port of Brunswick is bigger than it appears. We all know the Port of Brunswick is a significant part of our coastal economy. It provides jobs and income, directly and indirectly, for hundreds of people. But the port represents something larger. Much, much larger..
A port means trade, and trade brings people from distant countries together peacefully. Trade is like travel: it broadens our horizons and makes life richer and sweeter. (Travel, in fact, is just a type of trade.)
Through trade we discover people we didn’t know before, cultures we weren’t aware of before, ideas and perspectives we didn’t consider before. Trade doesn’t just make us better off, it makes us better human beings: wiser, more appreciative, humbler.
If that sounds like squishy, “we are the world” sanctimony, consider this simple reality. There are two ways for a country to obtain wealth greater than what it can produce. One way is trade. The other is war.
Some claim that trade is war by another means. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trade is mutually beneficial; war is mutually destructive. Trade brings people together peacefully and creates wealth; war destroys people and wealth. A standard tactic in war is to prevent the enemy from trading.
And in the sad and violent drama of human history, how have strangers – people of different places, cultures, races, political ideologies, or religions – typically related to each other? Not well. We humans are bundles of passion and emotion civilized by a few strands of reason. When political, religious, cultural, or racial differences have been the prime object of our passions and emotions, the result has invariably been ostracism, oppression, and violence.
But in the marketplace, politics, religion, culture, and race are irrelevant. Trade brings people together in their common humanity. All that matters is that people have produced different things that they value differently. So we trade and are better off because of it.
In short, trade is one of the most civilized and humane ways in which people of different places, cultures, races, and religions relate to each other. And trade is what the Port of Brunswick is all about.
Greater recognition of this reality about trade ought to dispel the fears some Americans have in the extraordinary amount of trade the U.S. conducts with China. This new relationship between the U.S. and China should be welcomed, not feared.
Only a generation ago, the U.S. and China were sworn geopolitical enemies with nuclear weapons aimed at each other. Today, the U.S. is China’s leading trading partner, while China is the U.S.’s second leading trading partner. In a world in which war and conflict are commonplace, this is astonishing progress.
What worries some Americans is the trade deficit the U.S. runs with China, which was $227 billion in 2009, as well as the $900 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds China owns, which amounts to 13 percent of publicly held U.S. government debt.
The worries are unfounded. We like a lot of goods produced in China; the Chinese like a lot of our financial assets. So we trade. And the trade, as always, is peaceful and mutually beneficial.
So here’s to humanity, civility, trade, and the Port of Brunswick.
The worries are unfounded. We like a lot of goods produced in China; the Chinese like a lot of our financial assets. So we trade. And the trade, as always, is peaceful and mutually beneficial.
