Helping Backward Areas

One might raise the question of what the effect would be on world friendship and good will to speak in such terms about other nations. Suppose your neighbor spoke of you as a backward person! Can there be any doubt that the best way to help another individual-or another nation-is to let him help himself? Hire him, if you will, or buy his product so that he may learn to work, produce, and trade. 60 Freedom of opportunity to work, to own, and to trade offers perhaps the best-known self-help to economic im provement. In the United States, the phenomenal rise to our present high level of living has been due in no small part to there having been few, if any, economic barriers at state lines or elsewhere within the country, We have demonstrated what free trade and a relatively free market can do for an economy. True, there are areas here which might be called "backward" if their average level of living were compared with other areas in the United States; but, if transplanted to other places in the world, these areas would stand out as anything but backward.

The redeeming feature in opening our markets to free trade among the so-called "backward" countries of the world is that it would cost us nothing to do so. On net balance, we would gain as much as they. Here is an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that when we glibly talk "free enterprise" we talk it with conviction not with restriction. The elimination of all trade barriers would have three very important beneficial effects: 1. It would permit our economy to gain from the specialization and comparative advantage in pro duction to be found all over the world. 2. It would help the so-called underdeveloped areas of the world to help themselves. It would give them a better chance to produce and trade. 3. It would be the best way to cement friendly re lations between Americans and other peoples all 61 over the world. How can one individual become angry with another when they are permitted to trade freely and voluntarily, knowing that both parties to the deal will benefit? In such trade, there is no danger of secret diplomacy, of playing special favorites, of handling other nations as pawns-pitting one against the other to seek a gain or even to attempt a precarious balance.