The following quotation and link to an article by William Graham Sumner refers to free international trade as opposed to trade barriers such as tariffs. He also talks about other modes of government intervention and the principals discussed apply to any government intervention aimed at helping a particular party to obtain a better position in the market place. This could refer to government aid for the biggest industrial corporations or for workers in a given trade. His clearly stated view is that any government aid meant to stimulate one enterprise, hurts others, the national economy as a whole, and eventually the favored enterprise itself:
"The free trader further holds that protection is all a mistake and delusion to those who think that they win by it, in that it lessens their self-reliance and energy and exposes their business to vicissitudes that, not being incident to a natural order of things, cannot be foreseen and guarded against by business skill; also that it throws the business into a condition in which it is exposed to a series of heats and chills, and finally, unless a new stimulus is applied, reduced to a state of dull decay. They therefore hold that even the protected would be far better off without it." -- William Graham Sumner; from the essay "What is Free Trade," first published in The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1918). http://mises.org/story/3604
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