Three hundred years ago, as England debated the India trade, few detected the flaws in mercantilism.42 One observer, Roger Coke, noted that Holland, the world’s wealthiest nation on a per capita basis, “imported everything,” whereas impoverished Ireland exported far more than it imported.43 Another, Charles Davenant, cogently explained that the benefits of keeping a nation “more Cheaply supply’d” with foreign imports far outweighed the damage done to domestic employment. He perceptively argued that trade was not in fact a zero-sum game, “For all Trades have a Mutual Dependance upon one
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