The Free Trade Conundrum: Balancing Worker Wages and Consumer Prices Comparing the 19th and 21st Centuries

Basics from key terminology to why we trade are featured alongside introductions to foundational concepts such as production possibilities frontiers, absolute and comparative advantage, trade barriers, and free trade versus protectionism.

What was the most beneficial policy for nineteenth-century African Americans: to stay in the United States and work for freedom, or to immigrate to a new place and build a society elsewhere? Your young historians will construct an...

Several graphs help to illustrate the dynamics of international trade in this slideshow. World prices, imports and exports, and the economic impact of tariffs are detailed in the presentation, along with arguments for free trade and the...

Learners learn the how trade impacted the colonial economy. They analyze the the benefits of NAFTA and learn the advantages to both the United States and Mexico.

To understand international trade, it is important to understand how tariffs work. This article explains one kind of tariff, the protective tariff.

Article with charts and links to related material discusses how free trade is a result of comparative advantage, and how consumers can consume beyond their original production possibilities frontier if they specialize and trade.

This article by Jacob G. Hornberger is an essay in the book, The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration, edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger. In it, Hornberger gives a hypothetical view of how life in the United States...

At this site from the University of Nebraska, students can learn about various types of trade restrictions and their effects by applying a model to determine who will benefit and who will be hurt by a tariff.

Economists generally agree that free trade helps to improve the overall quality of life in countries that participate. However, disagreements do arise concerning trade agreements. This lesson looks at a disagreement between the US and EU...

The activities in this unit will help students explore mercantilism and explain why the United States became involved in trading with China in the late 18th century.