It is erroneous to believe that free traders have been historically in favor of free trade agreements between governments. Paradoxically, the opposite is true. Curiously, many laissez-faire advocates fall into the government-made trap by supporting "free-trade" treaties. However, as Vilfredo Pareto stated in the article "Traités de commerce of the Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Economie Politique" (1901):

If we accept free trade, treatises of commerce have no reason to exist as a goal. There is no need to have them since what they are meant to fix does not exist anymore, each nation letting come and go freely any commodity at its borders. This was the doctrine of J.B. Say and of all the French economic school until Michel Chevalier. It is the exact model Léon Say recently adopted. It was also the doctrine of the English economic school until Cobden. Cobden, by taking the responsibility of the 1860 treaty between France and England, moved closer to the revival of the odious policy of the treaties of reciprocity, and came close to forgetting the doctrine of political economy for which he had been, in the first part of his life, the intransigent advocate.1

In 1859, the French liberal economist Michel Chevalier went to see Richard Cobden to propose a free trade treaty between France and England. For sure, this treaty, enacted in 1860, was a temporary success for free traders. What is less known however, is that at first, Cobden, in accordance with the free trade doctrine, refused to negotiate or sign any "free trade" treaty. His argument was that free trade should be unilateral, that it consists not in treaties but in complete freedom in international trade, regardless of where products come from.

Chevalier eventually succeeded in obtaining Cobden's support. But Cobden was puzzled by the complete secrecy surrounding the negotiations and, in a letter to Lord Palmerston, he attributed this secrecy to the "lack of courage" of the French government.2 Similarly, today, the lack of transparency concerning free-trade negotiations is problematic and it is often hard to know what the content of a treaty will be.

Today, while some of these treaties are currently being negotiated, there are already examples of similar agreements enforced. One could refer to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) or more regional agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the European Economic Area (EEA).

But why would protectionist governments who spend their time hampering markets by giving monopolies and other kinds of privileges at national level, open markets at the international level? The very fact that governments are negotiating in the name of free trade should be suspicious for any libertarian or true advocate of free trade.

Intergovernmental Agreements Enhance Government Power

Murray Rothbard opposed NAFTA and showed that what the Orwellians were calling a "free trade" agreement was in reality a means to cartelize and increase government control over the economy. Several clues lead us to the conclusion that protectionist policies often hide behind free trade agreements, for as Rothbard said, "genuine free trade doesn't require a treaty."

The first clue is the intergovernmental and top down approach. Intergovernmentalism is nothing more than a process governments use to mutualize their respective sovereignties in order to complete tasks they are not able to accomplish alone. Nation-states are entities which rarely give up power. When they finalize agreements, it is to strengthen their power, not to weaken it. On the contrary, free trade requires a decline of governments' regulatory power.