Schüller — “Zur Theorie der Handelspolitik” (1928)

Schüller recasts trade-policy theory as a problem of money, prices, production structure, and historically situated markets, not as a simple opposition between free trade and protection. Foreign trade regulation, he argues,

setzt alle Teile der volkswirtschaftlichen Theorie in Bewegung.

English translation: sets all parts of economic theory in motion.

His historical opening treats Smith, Ricardo, Mill, List, and Wagner as partial advances in an unfinished theory. Smith shattered mercantilist bullionism and exposed the waste caused when barriers divert labor and capital into inferior employments, but Schüller faults his assumptions of full employment and easy factor mobility. Ricardo sharpened the comparative-cost argument; Mill connected commodity prices with factor prices; List and Wagner restored development, agriculture, and social purpose. Schüller’s own aim is to move beyond doctrine toward an analysis of real costs, actual firms, and concrete market conditions.

The core of the essay begins with the heterogeneity of enterprises. As value theory starts from differentiated wants, trade theory must start from differentiated producers. Within one country the same commodity is produced under unequal conditions of natural endowment, location, transport, labor quality, credit, capital, technique, and entrepreneurial skill. Low-cost firms cannot expand indefinitely, because they face limits of capacity, inputs, labor, finance, and sales. International competition is therefore not a contest between national averages:

Nicht „Produktionszweige“ mit „durchschnittlichen“ Kosten stehen gegeneinander im Wettbewerb, sondern die einzelnen Betriebe mit ihren konkreten Kosten.

English translation: It is not "branches of production" with "average" costs that compete against one another, but individual enterprises with their concrete costs.

This premise explains why a country can import a commodity while still producing it domestically. The foreign price displaces only those home firms whose costs exceed it; lower-cost domestic producers remain, though their prices and differential gains decline. It also weakens the claim that imports cannot reduce national output: labor and capital are not always fully employed, and imports need not be matched by equivalent exports when credit, capital flows, or reduced consumption intervene.

Schüller’s welfare argument is consequently conditional and distributive. Imports cheapen goods for consumers and discipline domestic prices, but they also injure displaced producers and reduce rents. The decisive issue is the spread of domestic costs and the extent of foreign superiority. Where domestic cost differences are large, freer trade is relatively favorable because imports eliminate mainly the least efficient producers while much home production survives:

Je größer also die Unterschiede der Gestehungskosten einer Ware sind, desto größer sind die Vorteile des freien Handels im Verhältnis zu seinen Nachteilen.

English translation: The greater, therefore, the differences in the production costs of a commodity, the greater are the advantages of free trade in relation to its disadvantages.

Where domestic costs are clustered and the foreign advantage is small, a tariff may expand output at modest consumer cost. Yet Schüller does not become a protectionist. Even economically plausible duties may be abandoned if their removal secures better conditions for exports; this is the logic of commercial treaties:

Von entscheidender Bedeutung ist, daß die Erreichung entsprechender Erleichterungen für die Ausfuhr vorteilhafter ist als die Behinderung der Einfuhr.

English translation: It is of decisive importance that achieving corresponding facilitations for exports is more advantageous than obstructing imports.

He extends the same price-theoretical method to export capacity, tariff incidence, and cartels. Exportability depends on actual price relations shaped by production and consumption, not on abstract national superiority. Tariffs affect prices differently according to foreign supply and domestic cost structure. In cartelized industries, protection can be especially harmful: domestic consumers pay protected high prices while cartels use the proceeds to sell cheaply abroad, without necessarily increasing national output.

The final section reads postwar trade disorder through monetary instability. Currency collapse revived mercantilist fears and import prohibitions, but Schüller treats them as symptoms of disequilibrium rather than remedies. War had placed

das Geldproblem wieder in den Mittelpunkt des handelspolitischen Denkens gerückt.

English translation: the monetary problem has again been placed at the center of thinking on trade policy.