This year, 84% of Chinese citizens polled agreed the free market is best. That was the highest approval rating among all countries polled. China. (...) India, too, long a bastion of Third-Way economic planning and regulation, gave the free market a 79% approval rating.
The market has fans everywhere in the emerging economic superpowers: In Brazil, 75% of those polled expressed their approval; in Nigeria, 82% (where all those oilspills are, Ivan). (...) (T)he highest approval rating ever, 96% in 2002, was recorded by Vietnam, i.e., what we used to think of as Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam but maybe should be rethought of as Adam Smith’s Vietnam (even if 96% is the kind of majority Ho Chi Minh elections used to produce). In the Palestinian territories, the free market polls a vigorous 82%. (...)
(...)
It seems there’s also strong popular support for international trade. Growing trade and economic ties with other countries get 93% approval in China, 90% in India, 87% in Brazil, 84% in Britian, Poland and Nigeria, and so on. (...)
In the United States, worryingly, support for trade is only 66%, which puts that country between Egypt and Mexico in terms of openness to the world. That score is up from a disastrous 53% in 2008. Even so, for the first few decades after the Second World War, the United States was the main engine for worldwide trade liberalization. (...)
