Actions to restrict trade with other nations can develop into a "trade war," as nations continually act against each other's goods. In extreme cases, these tensions can escalate into armed conflict.
To sum up, this is a very negotiable topic. There are a lot of opinions about it. Reading information about free trade made me think that almost every positive advantage about it also might have some negative effect. For example, speaking about specialization- every country has comparative advantage and things that it can just do better than others. When there are no barriers to trade, a country is free to concentrate its economic activity on those things, and it can sell those products or services to the rest of the world. BUT the flip side of specializing in certain sectors is a dependence upon those sectors. Everything works well until another country makes a widget just as good. Or, worse, technological innovation means the world suddenly doesn’t need widgets at all. Where such a development may once have harmed one segment of the economy, even a large segment, now it can have catastrophic effects on the entire economy! Another example, competition- it tends to lower prices and increase quality. Rising to a challenge from abroad can strengthen a domestic industry, for example, the arrival of Japanese cars in the 1970s eventually forced U.S. automakers to improve quality. BUT in every competition, there will be winners and losers, what means lost jobs, closed factories and devastated communities and also might mean lower wages and less security for workers. But to conclude, I think that free trade in total is a goal for the states.
…
Free trade occurs when there are no artificial barriers put in place by governments to restrict the flow of goods and services between trading nations. Countries that open their trade barriers to allow free trade have the chance to enter the global market, which will increase income for the country. In the 1990s, developing countries that lifted trade restrictions tended to grow three times faster than countries that restricted trade. Free trade enables countries to specialise in the production of those commodities in which they have a comparative advantage. Free trade has a lot of benefits, but also there are a number of arguments put forward by lobby groups and protestors who oppose free trade and trade liberalisation. To fight against the disadvantages of the trade, states have protectionism- the practice of imposing restrictions on international trade as a means of protecting the local economic structure and performance.