ABSTRACT
Mainstream economists almost unanimously support unrestricted trade (Fuller & Geide-Stevenson 2003). Some believe that free trade is the only proposition in social science that “is both true and non-trivial” (Samuelson 1948: 683), while others even argue that it has become “something of an article of faith” (MacDonald & Markusen 1985: 277) in modern economics. 1 However, as Joan Robinson aptly points out, “there is no branch of economics in which there is a wider gap between orthodox doctrine and actual problems than in the theory of international trade” (Robinson 1973: 14).
