Tim Worstall has a typically trenchant and spot on piece about free trade:

Because it is imports that we desire — exports being simply the tiresome labour that we must ship abroad to pay for them — negotiating with other countries about their tariffs and quotas is ludicrous. Why should we care if the foreign governments make their own citizens poorer by denying them the products of the globe? We should concentrate on what makes us richer, the abolition of all those barriers to our own wealth that we impose upon ourselves.

Mind you, this argument from Joan Robinson is also spot on, which only goes to show:

[T[rade negotiations are conducted on the basis that we’ll stop throwing rocks in our harbours when you stop throwing rocks in yours: this is not rational.

Joan Robinson was as wrong as it is possible to be on almost every political argument. But almost everyone is right about something.

(I just made that sort-of aphorism up, and expect that commenters will soon point out that it is nonsense. Forgive me - I am still picking myself up off the floor after discovering that the Paris hotel into which I have just checked in has free super-duper wifi access).