In anticipation of my talk at an upcoming symposium this spring on “The Age of Trump: Projecting Policy and Legal Impacts in a Second Term” at the University of Saint Thomas (UST), I began blogging on Adam Smith’s timeless argument in favor of the “freedom of trade” with my 5 February post The Immortal Adam Smith. (FYI: I compiled my first set of Adam Smith-inspired blog posts 11 days later; see The ghost of Adam Smith.) In addition, I subsequently blogged about Smith’s four exceptions to free trade. For reference, links to my second set of Smith trade posts are assembled in one place below:

1. Adam Smith defends the Jones Act?
2. Smith’s defense of targeted tariffs
3. Smith’s digression on the necessaries of life
4. Two more Smithian exceptions to free trade: revenge and inertia
5. Smith’s qualified defense of reciprocal tariffs
6. Smith’s fourth and final exception to free trade
7. Adam Smith, absolute advantage, and free trade
8. The aftermath of the Seven Years’ War and Adam Smith’s defense of natural liberty
9. Adam Smith on the politics of free trade
10. Adam Smith’s theory of the second best

I then concluded my series on Adam Smith’s exceptions to free trade on 1 March with this post: Adam Smith on the freedom of trade: a coda. The question that I will leave as an exercise for the reader is this: does current U.S. trade policy fall within any of Smith’s pragmatic exceptions?