John Nye: evaluation

Transcript context

…If elites have so much influence over trade policy, why is it that Britain got rid of the Corn Laws at all? Because the Americans were one of the major beneficiaries. It hurt some British interest groups. Why did that happen? I think part of the reason for that is that the long 19th century is a period in which the industrialists are becoming much more important. And you have two aspects about this. The bilateral agreement in 1860 between Britain and France allows Britain to get access now to French markets in terms of their manufactures by having the French remove their prohibitions and lower their tariffs. But it also is a world in which increasingly those who were benefiting from some of these restrictions wanted to have them removed as freer trade was being more and more favorable to Great Britain. Finally, the other thing that occurred is that people forget that initially, the wine tariffs, which go back to the late 1600s and early 1700s, were primarily protectionist. They were an attack on France, but because of the high tariffs, the British were able to impose very high taxes on domestic alcohol, in particular things like beer, but also gin, whiskey, et cetera. They became so dependent on the revenues from those alcoholic products that, in fact, one of the things that happened is, even when the consensus was growing for liberating trade in alcohol, there was still concern about tariffs, and so the rise of the income tax and other forms of taxation gave them increased leeway to make these changes. As you know, in today’s America, there’s a major debate between bilateral and multilateral approaches to free trade, and most intellectuals, maybe without even thinking about it very much — they tend to think the multilateral approach is necessarily better. What is it you think we learn from the 19th century experience?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.