Commercial openness and the risks of specialization

Adams's preferred commercial openness is likened to modern fair trade: markets remain open while allowing adjustments between them. Completely barrier-free trade raises a different concern about specialization. Labour-intensive production can gravitate toward low-wage economies, while knowledge-intensive industries concentrate in highly educated ones. On this argument, increasingly separate patterns of production can create difficulties for both groups. The analogy helps explain the policy preference, although seventeenth-century practice does not fit modern trade categories precisely.