Mr Bickley has asked me to summarise and analyse the debate on trade between Duncan Whitmore and Bryan Mercadente. Having read both sides closely, I will say that the argument is not really about tariffs. It is about what liberty is, what keeps it alive when the world turns hostile, and how far you can bend libertarian theory before it stops being libertarianism at all. Free trade is just the test case.

Whitmore defends what he calls principled libertarianism: rights to life, liberty, and especially property are natural rights. The state may exist, but only as a night-watchman to stop obvious evil. Tariffs are therefore not a tool, but a rights-violation. Bryan replies as a “contingent libertarian”: rights are not inscribed in the sky, they are a settlement adopted by a community for its chosen ends. He accepts that free trade is usually best in the abstract, but he wants room for strategic protectionism to rebuild the social base that makes any liberty possible.

Both are writing as libertarians. Both think Britain is being wrecked by its current ruling class. They differ on whether you fight that by refusing any breach in the wall of principle, or by using very limited state power as a kind of tourniquet on a bleeding limb.

Whitmore’s article, “Contingent Libertarianism’ Dissected – a Further Reply to Bryan Mercadente,” is a sustained attempt to show that once you make liberty subordinate to other ends, you have already handed the state everything it needs to crush you. He accepts Bryan’s label for him – “principled libertarian” – but objects to the caricature:

“Mercadente’s conception of this is a champion of an atomised, market transaction society.”

For Whitmore, principled libertarianism is not about worship of shopping centres. It is about taking property rights as natural rights. People own themselves and what they justly acquire. Politics ought to withdraw, except to stop plain aggression. That is the starting point, not a tool for GDP.

By contrast, he says, the contingent libertarian “begins by presuming what everyone else’s ends should be” and then “allows” property rights only so far as they deliver those ends. In his words, liberty becomes:

“a switch to be flicked on or off depending on how well it serves his chosen metrics.”

That phrase is central. Whitmore’s basic claim is that if you tie liberty to “greater wealth” or “national survival,” you have converted it from a right into a permission. And permissions, by definition, can be withdrawn.

Tariffs are where this difference bites. Whitmore’s position is simple. If two people want to trade across a border, and do no harm to anyone else, then a tariff is a tax backed by force. You are coercing them into a different pattern of consumption or production in the name of “national interest.” That is enough, on his theory, to make tariffs wrong in principle. It does not matter if the spreadsheet shows some output gain.

He is not blind to the standard prudential objections, but he answers them in libertarian language. If people genuinely share a sense of “national survival” being at stake, they can already coordinate voluntarily, redirect spending, and invest accordingly. If they do not, then imposing a tariff means you are simply overriding their revealed preferences – which is just a polite way of saying you are forcing people who disagree with you.

He then raises the obvious question: who decides when “national survival” is in play? He reminds the reader that the last great “survival emergency” gave us lockdowns and biosecurity theatre. The climate lobby uses similar language. If you allow the state to override rights whenever “survival” is declared, you give politicians a permanent incentive to inflate crises, or manufacture them.

In that light, he calls the contingent libertarian a “fair-weather libertarian” – happy to sing about freedom when the stakes are low, and the moment things get serious, reaching for the handcuffs.

On the strategic side, Whitmore also pushes back against Bryan’s talk of “strategic dependency”. He argues that security for individuals and states alike rests less on brute force and more on norms – interdependence, moral pressure, and only then deterrence. Munitions matter, but the idea that a state must aim at self-sufficiency in arms, food, or energy is, in his view, dangerous.

The more a regime can stand alone, the less it has to lose by fighting. The more it feeds a domestic munitions industry, the more that industry will look for wars to justify itself. His conclusion is stark: if peace is the aim, “the self-sufficiency of states is the last thing we should want. The goal should be the opposite: to make every state as weak and dependent as possible.”

It is a harsh way of putting the standard liberal claim that trade raises the cost of war. Whitmore is extending that to a rather brutal vision of mutual fragility as a peace treaty.

Finally, Whitmore takes aim at what he sees as the political temptation behind contingent libertarianism. In his reading, Bryan wants to dazzle a demoralised, dependent electorate with a “soothing but dubious protectionist policy,” give them a limited industrial revival, and then use that as a bridge to reintroduce liberalism later.

He is not accusing Bryan of bad faith, exactly, but he thinks the structure is wrong. Any protectionist exception, however “temporary”, will create interest groups and lobbies whose whole job is to lobby for more protection. That is not a path back to liberty; it is the start of a new patronage web.

Bryan’s reply, “Free Trade and the Foundations of Liberty: Another Response to Duncan Whitmore,” starts by accepting the label “contingent libertarian” and then tries to show that somebody has to be one.

He makes the disagreement explicit at the start:

“Mr Whitmore argues as a principled libertarian. He takes property rights as natural rights… I argue as a contingent libertarian. I take rights as a settlement adopted by a community for chosen ends: prosperity, peace, continuity, and the minimal unhappiness compatible with survival.”

In his view, there are no natural rights unless you believe in “Sebastian Wang’s Sky Daddy.” There is no natural law; there are only human preferences and the settlements we build out of them.

As a Catholic, I obviously disagree with that part quite strongly. I also note his dismissal of The Lord God as my “Sky Daddy.” But I will set this aside until we have another sleepover and I have him at my mercy. For the moment, it is worth seeing how the rest of his argument hangs together if you accept his premises.

Bryan’s picture of a liberal order is deliberately demystified. A community chooses certain ends – survival, continuity, a tolerable life for most of its members. Intelligent rulers then refrain from the cruder forms of predation and encourage norms that reinforce restraint. Rights to life, liberty, and property are part of this bargain because they are useful, not because the universe has engraved them on tablets.

He is not sneering at natural-rights language. On the contrary, he calls the long chains of reasoning that lead to them “ideologies” that may be helpful in supporting a liberal settlement. He only insists that their real-world force comes from habits and prudence, not from metaphysical prestige. If the metaphysics lose prestige, the rights will not last unless they have institutional backing.

This is one of his core worries about principled libertarianism. If you insist that you need a fully worked natural law theory before you can defend property rights, then you have tied liberty to the social standing of that theory. When the philosophy department moves on, your rights go with it.

From there, he turns to the present British state. On this point he is harsher than Whitmore. He says the country has been under “enemy occupation” for at least a hundred years. Every law and tax is now used for our destruction. Given that starting point, he regards Whitmore’s talk of “turning off” the emergency switch as unrealistic. Coercion is not going away. There will always be some coalition using it. The real question is which coalition, and what they use it for. The word “rights” does not let you opt out of that fight.

Where Whitmore sees any exception as a blank cheque, Bryan proposes three kinds of restraint: exceptions should be legible, narrow, and explicitly time-limited; domestic distortions (tax, energy, regulation) should be cut first; and any support should be tied to performance conditions. He calls this an attempt to “discipline the only institution with the reach to unwind the distortions that now sustain it,” rather than an endorsement of statism.

You may or may not find that reassuring, but it is more detailed than the straw man he is replying to.

On free trade, Bryan is surprisingly orthodox at the level of theory. He says “the abstract case for free trade is unbeatable” and does not withdraw that. What he questions is whether the present regime trading under the “free trade” banner deserves the name. In practice, he sees a cartelised global order using trade rules to entrench its power.

His protectionism is not presented as a general doctrine. It is presented as a tourniquet. The aim is to rebuild some domestic capacity and, more importantly, to rebuild a skilled, self-respecting industrial working class, which he regards as the necessary social base for any serious liberal politics.

This is where his most interesting, and most controversial, claims lie. He argues that skilled workers are “applied rationalists.” They live by understanding cause and effect in their work. As a result, they are more open to abstract arguments about tax and regulation. By contrast, a population of compliance administrators and delivery drivers will tend towards magical thinking and be easy to manipulate. He illustrates this with a grim little anecdote about lottery numbers, cats, and prayer.

The purpose of industrial protection, in his view, is not to “make Britain rich” in a narrow sense. He accepts that every tariff is a deadweight cost and that it will generate lobbies. He still thinks the trade-off may be worth it if it recreates a layer of industrial Britain that can once again support liberal ends. Cheap underwear from Bangladesh will not produce an electorate willing to vote for liberty. A promise of secure, well-paid work might.

Technically, he also disputes Whitmore’s implicit view of comparative advantage as exogenous. Clusters of small workshops and foundries may look inefficient in one decade and turn out to be vital seedbeds for the next industrial leap. Wiping them out in the name of efficiency may destroy “option value” – the ability to pivot into new industries when technology changes. Temporary protection, in his view, can sometimes be an investment in that option value.

The real disagreement between them is not over economic theory. It is about the nature of rights, but also about what is politically possible in any given cirucmstances. Whitmore offers moral clarity; Bryan offers institutional caution. That is true, but a bit flat. Underneath, there are at least four fault-lines.

a) Metaphysics versus settlements

On the level of philosophy, Whitmore thinks you need a theory of natural rights if you want a stable bulwark against creeping statism. Bryan thinks that is backwards. For him, rights are a by-product of a successful settlement. Their stability depends on how far that settlement aligns with people’s perceived interests.

As a believing Catholic, I cannot follow Bryan in declaring natural law a myth. I do, however, see the force of his warning. A rights-language that no one believes in, and for which there are no institutional guardians, is not a defence. It is a slogan.

Whitmore is right that if you abandon the distinction between aggression and non-aggression, you remove the moral limit on what the state may do. Bryan is right that saying “aggression is wrong” does not by itself stop a hostile ruling class from redefining your mere existence as aggression.

b) Voluntary coordination versus political pre-conditions

On trade and “national survival,” Whitmore leans heavily on the idea that if people genuinely agree about a threat, they will voluntarily act. They can invest, stockpile, or boycott. If they do not act, that is “the nation’s verdict,” and forcing them is unjustified.()

Bryan thinks that assumes a social base that no longer exists. If your electorate has been “moronised” – his word – and stripped of any serious role in production, the sort of voluntary coordination Whitmore imagines is a fantasy. The slogans will be about survival, but the real decisions will still be taken by the same coalition that is running the country down now. Under those conditions, a purely negative libertarianism is helpless.

Here there is a genuine clash of temperament. Whitmore treats the current situation as one more example of state abuse, to be resisted with the old tools. Bryan treats it as something closer to regime occupation, which may require a different playbook.

c) Peace through weakness versus peace through “option value”

The interdependence argument is another sharp divide. Whitmore wants states weak and mutually dependent, precisely so that the cost of war is high. Bryan agrees that interdependence can be peace, but adds a second possibility: interdependence can be turned into leverage by hostile powers.

For Whitmore, the more you can be cut off, the less you will risk fighting. For Bryan, the more easily you can be cut off, the less you can bargain. The key word in his reply is “option value.” A state with some domestic munitions capacity and energy resilience can walk away from a bad deal. A state that relies entirely on fragile import chains will eventually be told what to do by whoever controls the choke points.

In the abstract, both are right. In practice, it depends who controls the chains.

d) The working class and the survival of liberalism

Finally, there is the question of which class base liberalism needs. Whitmore is largely silent on this. His focus is on rights and the state, not on class structure.

Bryan is explicit. He thinks liberty historically leaned on a certain type of skilled worker: literate, technically minded, embedded in civic institutions like libraries, debating societies, and mutual aid clubs. He notes that when those factories and workshops disappeared from his town, what followed was not a flowering of cosmopolitan rationalism but a resurgence of superstition.

Whitmore might reply that you do not fix that by giving steel and chip fabricators a tariff. You fix it by freeing the school, the family, and the church from state control. He might also point out that the nineteenth-century skilled worker was already the product of a quite liberal order and cannot simply be recreated by decree.

Bryan would answer that a purely rhetorical libertarianism has spent forty years repeating “the case for free trade” while watching the social base that once listened to it being dissolved. At some point, insisting on the purity of the theory begins to look like an excuse for doing nothing.

If I try to read both pieces honestly, my own sympathies lie in an awkward middle.

On the philosophical level, I am closer to Whitmore. If you jettison any notion of natural law, you can certainly build a pragmatic defence of liberty, but you have also admitted that it all rests on what people happen to find attractive at the time. Bryan is frank about this. The community that chooses mass human sacrifice is not “wrong” on any objective scale; it is just unappealing to him.

In the long run, that makes freedom dependent on fashion. I would rather anchor it in something harder than mood.

On the historical and institutional level, however, I find some of Whitmore’s confidence nostalgic. The British state we have is not the night-watchman that classical liberals like to imagine. It is exactly what Bryan calls it: an occupation government whose ends are not ours. It is happy to use “free trade” to hollow out national industry when that suits its coalition, and equally happy to slap on emergency powers when that suits the same people.

I do not trust this state with a tariff policy. I also do not trust it with the existing trade regime.

If you take that seriously, some of Bryan’s tourniquet language stops sounding like an obvious betrayal and starts sounding like a dangerous but perhaps sometimes necessary operation. You may need to use a hostile institution to undo distortions that only it can reach. The problem, of course, is that the institution is hostile. It does not want to undo them.

At that point, the disagreement between Whitmore and Bryan almost collapses into a shared problem. Whitmore is saying: “Do not give these people any more levers than they have already.” Bryan is saying: “Without some use of levers, we shall never get a public capable of dislodging them.”

There is no clean way out of that dilemma. The risk is real on both sides. Refuse any exception and you may watch your society drift into permanent client status, with liberty reduced to an online slogan. Allow carefully bounded exceptions and you may discover that the bounds are much looser in practice than they looked on paper.

The only sensible conclusion, for me, is a kind of uneasy hybrid.

• We need Whitmore’s insistence that rights are not just another policy variable. If you abandon that, you will always find an emergency that justifies one more “temporary” breach.
• We also need Bryan’s insistence that liberty is an ecosystem, not an incantation. A country of atomised supervisors and van drivers owned by foreign logistics apps is not going to defend property rights in the abstract.

I would add one further point that neither article really confronts. Both talk about “the nation” and “the community” as if these are still coherent units. The British ruling class has spent decades dissolving that coherence through immigration policy, educational propaganda, and legal attacks on any remaining sense of common culture. In that situation, the choice between principled and contingent libertarianism is not just philosophical. It is also demographic.

Whom is this liberal order for? Which people are we trying to rebuild it with? If you dodge that question, your theory of trade – free or protected – floats in midair.

These essays are valuable because they force libertarians to say out loud what they often leave implicit. Whitmore’s piece is an honest defence of the view that liberty must stand above all other ends if it is to survive. Bryan’s is an equally honest argument that liberty is downstream of social and institutional facts, and that in a country like Britain in 2025, those facts may justify a limited use of protectionism.

Neither, in my view, has the whole answer.

Whitmore underestimates how far the preconditions for his model have been deliberately dismantled. Bryan underestimates how quickly a “temporary” deviation from principle can turn into a permanent racket once real politicians get involved.

If there is any common ground, it lies in Bryan’s own line near the end: “economise with dogma.” It applies both ways. Free trade is not a sacrament. Protection is not a magic wall. Natural rights are not geometry, but neither are they just a taste. Anyone serious about rebuilding a free country will need Whitmore’s moral stubbornness and Bryan’s gloomy sense of how bad things already are.

Whether that combination is achievable under an occupation government is another question. Neither essay quite answers it. Perhaps that is why this debate matters more than the tariff examples used to illustrate it.