Throughout history, Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, who visited China in 1972, gave the first sign of free trade between two countries; Obama, a former president of the United States, emphasized that the United States strongly supports free trade, as Trump claimed. Nearly fifty years ago, when China and the United States established diplomatic relations, the volume of bilateral trade was almost zero. Thus, the development of free trade between the two countries is evident. Furthermore, many European countries have been strong advocates of free trade until now, as they have benefited and continue to benefit from it. While in these years, Trump has continuously increased tariffs and set quotas, which interfere with the free flow of trade between nations. Furthermore, the UK is about to leave the EU, which gives a negative sign to other EU countries. So we have to ask ourselves a question. Has free trade done more good than harm so far? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay With the question above, this thesis is mainly a study on the analysis of the rationality of free trade, concerning politics current trade war. and Brexit. Literally, free trade is a policy in which governments do not restrict imports or exports in international markets. Buyers and sellers from different economies can voluntarily trade without a government imposing tariffs (such as quotas), subsidies, or bans on goods and services (but not on capital or labor ). Politically, a free trade policy may be the absence of any trade policy. In other words, a government may not need to take specific steps to promote free trade. This non-intervention stance is called commercial laissez-faire or trade liberalization. But it is worth mentioning that the reality is that governments with free trade agreements will never give up all their control over the taxation of imports and exports. “Free trade” does not exist entirely because every country has important interests that could be devastated by absolute free trade. The interests they are trying to preserve will be protected by various overt or surreptitious restrictions. According to Blinder (2019), two economists gave clear reasons against mercantilism and opted for free trade over 200 years ago. Their names were Adam Smith and David Ricardo, whose arguments have since convinced virtually every economist, but from what is mentioned, both economists made only limited inroads with the general public at that time. Nowadays, there are already several major free trade areas in the world, such as NAFTA, EU, CAFTA, FTAA, etc. And China has also established strategic partnerships with many countries through free trade zones. This trend therefore shows that there must be positive effects that countries find profitable. The results of the current implementation of free trade show the gains. Free trade gives rise to fierce competition, which can improve the quality of companies' services, encouraging them to improve their management capabilities. On the other hand, this provides a good opportunity for industries with comparative advantages in a given country to specialize and effectively achieve economies of scale. Companies grantmore attention to cost reduction. Thanks to trade, products are also diversified, which allows consumers to benefit from more alternatives, at a lower price. Furthermore, when service providers fully consider the needs of consumers, they always strive to improve the quality of their services by all means, providing them with as much convenience as possible. Furthermore, with increased demand from different countries, more employment opportunities are being created in exporting countries. Hur and Park emphasized that the relationship between free trade and economic growth is indisputable. They also referred to two economists Grossman and Helpman, who predicted that if a free trade system is shaped under circumstances in which technology transfer has taken place between the economies involved, production efficiency can be improved and free trade can therefore ultimately lead to economic growth among FTA signatory countries. .However, in practice, advantages are always accompanied by disadvantages, which can be considered an axiom. It has been found that the effects of FTAs ​​are small on overall growth between the first year and ten years after their launch, but there is a nonsense. -an ignorable increasing trend in the gap between GDP per capita growth rates within a bilateral FTA. This speaks to the unequal effects of FTAs ​​between countries within an FTA. To some extent, free trade reduces the competitiveness of importing countries' products, increasing unemployment of workers in certain industries (with fewer comparative advantages). Then it will also influence social construction and development. The uniqueness of industrial structures also poses a potential threat. Studies by Ju have shown that free trade could make the consumer worse off by spending more money on exported goods, providing an alternative path for conflicting interests in free trade. A more general result was also demonstrated by Ju: as long as the share of consumer spending is greater than that of average spending in the ratio of national production to consumption, free trade policy will lead to an increase in relative prices, which will lead to an increase in relative prices. would harm certain groups of consumers. When it comes to unemployment, people's complaints are even worse. This has made people more negative about international trade in the United States: a 2016 CBS poll asked Americans: "Overall, would you say that U.S. trade with other countries creates more jobs for the United States, loses more jobs for the United States? ..., or does American trade with other countries have no effect on American jobs? About 15 percent of respondents gave what economists would call the correct answer: trade has little or no effect on the number of jobs. About seven percent were unsure. Of the remainder, 29 percent thought trade created jobs and 48 percent thought it destroyed them. And in a poll the same year by Bloomberg, which juxtaposed the costs of restricting imports and protecting American jobs, trade restrictions won: 65 percent to 22 percent. It seems that Americans favor trade in the abstract, but often not in concrete terms. And support fades quickly if trade is linked to the globalization of jobs. More importantly, in almost all cases, public beliefs about international trade differ wildly from economic lessons101. So if the arguments for free trade are so compelling, why have economists failed to convince them? -globalization is happening. Around the world, many developed countries have resorted to protectionism to protect their manufacturing, services and agriculture sectors. When they accumulated enough wealth to benefit from it, they began to implement free trade policies. But when they found that profits were lower or they felt that national interests were being undermined, they abandoned their original method of trading. To prove this point, for example (as cited by Hughes): Japan and South Korea, China's main Asian trading partners, joined the chorus of opposition after finding that the yen was competitive and their victory was reduced because of the decline in the dollar. indexed to the Yuan. Interestingly, when the Asian financial crisis occurred in the 1990s, they made many positive comments to the Chinese government for keeping the yuan stable after its currency was devalued, which helped prevent a financial crisis across Asia. As a result, China lost exports in the short term, but retained currency stability in the long term. At present, stability remains the determining factor in Beijing's monetary policy. Despite the influences of free trade itself, every decision a country makes is made by individuals, what to trade for, who to trade with, and who to blame when things happen. Indeed, the root of free trade's problems certainly lies not in whether countries should continue to do it, but in how they do it. On why the U.S. administration is confident in forcefully defending the resulting need to impose quotas, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez once asserted that "free trade must be fair trade, and we will ensure "so that American manufacturers and workers compete on a level playing field." (Hughes, 2005) These words should be viewed with suspicion, because in different cases, as a developed country, the United States has used completely different ways to clarify its meaning of "free trade." However, it is worth mentioning that "fair trade" is a completely different term from "free trade", which involves purchasing goods directly from producers in developing countries. It can thus be seen that almost all countries in the world are trying to meet their own interests, as shown below. Any policy is reasonable if viewed from the perspective of the party involved. Likewise, does Brexit mean Britain turning in on itself? Needless to say, the answer would be “no”. According to Qingjiang Kong, after Britain leaves the EU, developing partnerships through FTAs ​​could help mitigate the boom caused by Brexit. The UK needs to reduce its dependence on the European market and it would be better to try to find a substitute for the single common market. It still takes time to see whether or not a China-UK FTA could reduce trade costs. Whereas, for both countries, a free trade relationship could exist to meet their respective needs as much as possible. To summarize, as the saying goes, every coin has two sides; every sword is double-edged, which is consistent with the “usefulness” of free trade. If used correctly, all parties involved in the game will win the game. It's definitely not a sum game., 72, 41-63.