“In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.”

— Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

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Adam Smith 175

Scottish moral philosopher and political economist 1723–1790

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Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

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Adam Smith 175

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