Turn to the leading US newspapers these days and you will read about the “loss of nerve”, even “loss of faith”, in free trade by economists. Many write about free trade in funereal overtones. Yet all this hype reminds me of the cartoon where two dervishes are idly sitting on the desert sands, next to their camels, and one is reading the Cairo news­paper, Al-Ahram, and telling the other: “It says that we are in ferment again.” The truth of the matter is that free trade is alive and well among economists.

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This is best seen in historical perspective. Such media stories about the economists’ disappearing consensus on free trade have been recurrently written in the past 20 years. There have been three episodes in recent years when false notes of alarm were sounded over free trade.