Ep. 27 Is Free Trade Good or Bad?
Contra Krugman
Tom Woods
4.7 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2016
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Krugman discusses how economists should respond to the growth in sympathy for protectionism. Along the way, his Keynesian assumptions lead him to oddball conclusions. Bob and Tom also spend some time explaining the classical case for free trade and discussing whether that case has been vitiated in light of modern conditions.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Contra Krugman, episode 27. |
| 0:05.3 | Welcome to the podcast that takes apart Paul Krugman's New York Times column. |
| 0:10.0 | Join us as Tom Woods and Bob Murphy teach economics by uncovering and dissecting the arrows of Krugman. |
| 0:15.9 | Nobel Prize winner, newspaper columnist, and Destroyer of Nations. |
| 0:20.0 | It's time for Contra Krookman. |
| 0:24.0 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Contra Krookman. I'm Tom Woods. Once again with Bob |
| 0:29.9 | Murphy. I am no longer out of sorts. It's tremendous. It's great. We're grateful to Dave |
| 0:35.2 | Howden for standing in for Bob, but here is Bob himself freshly returned from Europe just a matter of days ago. |
| 0:43.1 | Bob, you went to a great many countries. Well, how many countries did you visit? And what was it like over there? |
| 0:48.7 | Let's see. We went to, started in Slovenia, then I went to Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. |
| 0:59.9 | Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't realize how centered toward Eastern Europe it was. I thought, okay. Oh, well, that's great. |
| 1:06.1 | Well, yeah. Ben Powell did that in particular because he says that, you know, that was where he thought the people would be more enthusiastic to see me coming in as the staunch Rothbardian. |
| 1:16.6 | And it was true. |
| 1:17.4 | The people there were really great and it was exciting. |
| 1:21.5 | And I'm not kidding, folks. |
| 1:22.8 | There were people coming with every stop coming up and saying how much they love the podcast and how much they |
| 1:27.6 | couldn't stand Paul Krugman. I even worked it into one of my opening jokes about, you know, |
| 1:32.0 | if the EU really wanted to protect Europeans from harmful imports, they would keep out Paul Kroogman's |
| 1:36.4 | column. Oh, great, great laugh line right there. That's good. Good man, Bob. That is so exciting that |
| 1:41.6 | people in these countries are coming up to you and saying they're listening to the show. I haven't checked for this show. I've checked for my own podcast, but for this show, we actually have the data of who's listening around the world. I mean, not the individual names of people, but we can find out all the countries where we're being listened to. And how thrilling it. I mean, that's really amazing. That's, |
| 2:01.5 | that's an experience that 20 years ago you couldn't have had. The technology didn't exist. |
| 2:06.4 | Yeah, we have 100% male listeners in the U.S. and 100% male listeners in Eastern Europe. It's |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tom Woods, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tom Woods and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.