ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | DECEMBER 1944 | CANADIAN COUNTRYMAN
This cartoon first appeared in a December 1944 edition of Canadian Countryman. It depicts an imprisoned man representing “world trade” sitting in his cell, accompanied by a caption reading: “another prisoner who must be ‘Free’ again.” The cartoon represents free trade as a solution to the economic problems caused by the Second World War, which was almost at its end. This was a solution offered up by those who were eager to avoid a repeat of the economic depression that followed the First World War, characterized as it was by the worldwide creation of trade barriers and protectionist policies. Canadian farmers also had a direct interest in advocating a system of open markets, as their produce found ready consumers among the hungry citizens of war-ravaged Europe.
A system of freer markets was indeed what prevailed in the post-War period, overseen and regulated by new transnational institutions like the International Monetary Fund. This system is also widely seen as the cause of the quarter-century of worldwide economic expansion that followed.