tariff wall will provide less and less protection. Eventually, the domestic
firms will succumb to foreign competition. Meanwhile, domestic living
standards will fall relative to foreign ones.
Given that any country can be better off by specializing in those goods in
which it has a comparative advantage, one might wonder why most
countries of the world continue in some way to restrict the flow of trade.
Why do tariffs and other barriers to trade continue to exist two centuries
after Adam Smith and David Ricardo argued the case for free trade? Is
there a valid case for some protection?