Razeen Sally's New Frontiers in Free Trade - Chapter 2

Sally demonstrates the mercantilist’s view of economics, only to slay each of its five tenets quoting classical economists as saying that mercantilism is economic nonsense. He instead believes in Adam Smith and David Hume’s line of classical liberal economics.
This school of thought requires that rule of law be established and argues that enacting free trade practices helps economies and is simply morally better than mercantilism because free trade is inherently non-discriminatory.
Sally states that protectionist arguments “presume too much government intelligence and capability, and overlook the probability of interest-group capture.” I wholeheartedly agree with Sally on this issue. Most politicians have law degrees and massive egos. Neither of these are proper prerequisites for choosing economic policies. The Soviet Union had geniuses run its economy into the ground with nice-sounding economic theories. The best domestic policies involve little government intervention, so too should the best trade policies.