About two hundred years ago, largely as a result of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, free trade achieved an intellectual status unrivaled by any other doctrine in the field of economics. What accounts for the success of free trade against then prevailing mercantilist doctrines? And how well has free trade withstood various theoretical attacks that have challenged it since Adam Smith's time? In this readable intellectual history, Douglas Irwin explains how the idea of free trade has endured against the tide of the abundant criticisms that have been leveled against it from the ancient world and Adam Smith's day to the present. An accessible, nontechnical look at one of the most important concepts in the field of economics, Against the Tide will allow the reader to put the ever new guises of protectionist thinking into the context of the past and discover why the idea of free trade has so successfully prevailed over time.

Irwin traces the origins of the free trade doctrine from premercantilist times up to Adam Smith and the classical economists. In lucid and careful terms he shows how Smith's compelling arguments in favor of free trade overthrew mercantilist views that domestic industries should be protected from import competition. Once a presumption about the economic benefits of free trade was established, various objections to free trade arose in the form of major arguments for protectionism, such as those relating to the terms of trade, infant industries, increasing returns, wage distortions, income distribution, unemployment, and strategic trade policy. Discussing the contentious historical controversies surrounding each of these arguments, Irwin reveals the serious analytical and practical weaknesses of each, and in the process shows why free trade remains among the most durable and robust propositions that economics has to offer for the conduct of economic policy.

道格拉斯•欧文（Douglas R. Irwin），现任美国达特玛斯学院经济学教授，另著有《管理贸易：反对进口限额的理由》（1994年）、《备受非议的自由贸易》（2002年）、《贩卖保护主义：斯穆特－霍利与大萧条》（2011年）、《贸易政策灾难：1930年代的教训》（2012年）等。

梅俊杰，现任上海社会科学院国际政治经济学研究员、外国经济史研究中心主任，著有《自由贸易的神话：英美富强之道考辨》（2008年），所撰文章见于国内外五十余种报刊，另译有《科尔贝：法国重商主义之父》（2012年）、《写给无神论者》（2012年）、《生态政治》（2002年）等。