“Every free trader has heard it: Sure, we’d all love for there to be free trade, sounds nice in theory, but in the real world it can’t happen. Supposedly free trade is a utopian position, and protectionism is the pragmatic, realistic alternative.”

But as Dominic Pino relates in “Free Trade Is How You Live Your Life,” the lead cover story of the May issue of National Review, “this common framing of the issue of international trade is exactly backward.”

Protectionism is a utopian theory based on the assumptions that individuals and businesses will act contrary to their self-interest, government will act in the national interest, and special interests will stay on the sidelines. Free trade is how you live your everyday life.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith endeavored to show how people acting in their self-interest could........

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