Ian Fletcher (author of Free Trade Doesn't Work) illustrates the mindless snobbish groupthink of unbalanced/free trade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chc-F1BOQwI

mralstoner

So do you think all free trade should be abolished, i.e. no-one should be free to exchange anything with anyone, with all decisions on what to exchange being made by some central coercive authority?

If not, then obviously you are partly in favour of free trade. Why don't you explain the conditions on which trade should be free? Why don't those same conditions apply to the trade that should not?

Peter Hume, why do you presume I have all the answers? Currently, lower prices is the only thing that free-trade values. But clearly such mindless freedom is now trashing other values. Free trade is currently set at the "suicidally paralysed" level. We are literally financing the expansion of China's military. That is insane. Complete lunacy. National security is a value that must not be usurped by the mindless pursuit of cheaper prices.

And there's other values that need to re-enter the picture. Do we all want to work down a mine? No. We value certain type of work, in a certain place i.e. not too far from our families and not down a stinky mine. And we need to retain manufacturing skills in the country.

I don't have all the answers, but we need to pull these other values back into the picture. So I'd say we do need some form of protectionism. Off the top of my head, I say that whatever someone wants to produce locally that is not ridiculously overpriced, ought to be protected by a tariff. If it costs us a bit more to do that, so be it. And whatever we can't produce here, import it.