Cato Tugs Stray Back Onto the Reservation

Recent posts (2, 3, 4, 5), and a wonderful speech by Congressman Ron Paul properly chastised Cato writers for opposing reimportation of medicines, thus adopting a protectionist, anti-free trade, anti-property rights stance.

It must have caused some outcry among Cato’s libertarian supporters. Looks like Cato’s Ed Crane and Roger Pilon decided to get back on course, in their article Conservative Drug Split in NRO. They conclude “Reimportation is right and good”, but they spend a lot of time bending over backward to try to make the protectionist argument look respectable, making for an overlong, convoluted defense of free trade. It should take about a paragraph or three, at most, for a libertarian, free-market group to explain why there is nothing wrong with free trade.

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11:18 am on July 29, 2003