Wilhelm Röpke on Bernhard Harms’s Die Zukunft der deutschen Handelspolitik (1926)

Wilhelm Röpke’s journal book review assesses the first volume of Bernhard Harms’s study of German trade policy. Written after the adoption of the smaller tariff bill in August 1925, it treats the principal direction of policy as already settled, despite the outstanding larger tariff. The immediate task is therefore to examine the consequences for domestic economic life and trade negotiations, test earlier predictions, and reassess the literature generated by the tariff controversy. Röpke argues that subsequent developments have strengthened the standing of writers who warned against the new course. He ranks Harms’s contribution foremost for thoroughness and balanced judgment, while questioning whether its practical concessions consistently follow its theoretical principles.

The review first identifies Harms’s central recommendation and the architecture of his projected two-volume work. The published volume supplies historical, tariff-law, methodological, and theoretical foundations before examining agricultural duties; the forthcoming volume is to address industrial tariffs. Röpke locates Harms within a broader scholarly opposition to renewed agricultural protection, associated with the Stuttgart resolution of university social economists and the writings of Sering, Aereboe, Wiedenfeld, and Eckert. Its common position is:

Der Wiedereinführung der suspendierten Agrarzölle ist im ganzen zu widerraten, da sie die kritische Lage der deutschen Landwirtschaft nicht bessern können, dafür aber im Interesse der gesamten Volkswirtschaft und im besonderen der Landwirtschaft der schonende Abbau der nach dem Kriege im Stillen teilweise gewaltig erhöhten Industriezölle anzustreben.

English translation: On balance, the reintroduction of the suspended agricultural tariffs should be discouraged, since they cannot improve the critical situation of German agriculture; instead, in the interest of the economy as a whole and of agriculture in particular, a gradual reduction of the industrial tariffs, some of which were quietly increased enormously after the war, should be pursued.

This formulation links agricultural recovery to the reduction of industrial protection rather than to compensating agriculture with duties of its own. Röpke endorses that practical orientation. His criticism begins with Harms’s historical justification of prewar policy, which Harms broadly approves while distancing himself from principled free traders. For Röpke, economic expansion under a tariff regime does not establish that the regime caused or rationally supported that expansion. Germany’s prosperity might instead show that it could afford an economically irrational policy adopted for noneconomic reasons. He also finds the introductory historical discussion insufficiently attentive to industrial dumping, which complicates conclusions drawn from foreign-trade figures.

Röpke distinguishes this problem of evidence from a limit on scientific judgment. An objective such as preserving eastern German landed rents cannot itself be affirmed or rejected by strictly scientific means. Yet acknowledging that limit does not excuse inconsistency within an economic argument. Harms’s strongest methodological commitment is his refusal to conduct trade policy without general theoretical guidance. The review identifies the relevant distinction precisely:

Harms bekennt sich im Anschluß an die Listsche Theorie der produktiven Kräfte zum Erziehungs- und — implicite — zum Notstandszoll, lehnt dafür aber den Erhaltungszoll kategorisch ab.

English translation: Following List’s theory of productive forces, Harms endorses the educational tariff and—implicitly—the emergency tariff, but categorically rejects the maintenance tariff.

The distinction separates protection intended to develop productive capacity or meet an emergency from protection intended simply to preserve an existing economic position. Röpke regards the former exceptions as compatible with free trade. They might justify shielding German agriculture from overwhelming overseas competition during the 1880s, but they cannot automatically justify protection throughout the remaining prewar period or the linked protection of agricultural and industrial interests. Harms’s favorable historical verdict consequently sits uneasily beside his rejection of maintenance tariffs. The issue is not merely whether Harms is sufficiently liberal, but whether his historical conclusions follow the principles that give his work its intellectual authority.

That tension carries into the treatment of current policy. Röpke admires Harms’s detailed agricultural analysis but worries that qualifications and arguments of expediency nearly bury its theoretical rule. Practical judgment is unavoidable; nevertheless, exceptions must remain exceptional if the rule is to retain meaning. He therefore questions Harms’s provisional rejection of grain duties, approval of duties on flour and certain specialized crops, and treatment of livestock and meat tariffs. These concessions risk giving protectionists room to maneuver. The decisive test should be whether an emergency truly cannot be remedied by other means, or whether productive development genuinely cannot be achieved without a tariff.

The conclusion places these reservations within a substantial agreement. Röpke identifies himself as a more resolute free trader, but does not want criticism of Harms to strengthen their common opponents. He endorses the book’s refusal to sacrifice either agriculture to industry or the livelihoods of millions in an industrialized society to the preservation of agricultural rents. Agriculture’s importance cannot undo industrialization and urbanization; nor, he notes, is agriculture directly exposed to the transfer crisis. The reconciliation he proposes is emphatically social as well as economic:

Es kann nicht zweifelhaft sein, daß vor dem Kriege wie heute die Lösung dieser Antinomie nicht der solidarische Schutzzoll, sondern nur der solidarische Freihandel sein kann: nicht aus großstädtischer Perspektive, nicht aus Landwirtschaftsfeindlichkeit, sondern gerade aus soziologischem Verständnis für den Segen und den Wert eines freien und kräftigen Bauerntums.

English translation: There can be no doubt that, before the war as today, the solution to this antinomy can be neither mutually supporting protective tariffs nor anything other than mutually supporting free trade: not from a metropolitan perspective, not from hostility to agriculture, but precisely from a sociological understanding of the benefits and value of a free and vigorous peasantry.

Free trade thus becomes a positive agricultural reform program, not simply opposition to tariffs. Röpke points to developments too recent for Harms’s book: despite grain duties and import certificates, the crisis is increasingly concentrated in the eastern regions of large-scale grain farming. He interprets this as creating an opening for structural change in favor of peasant farming. The review’s distinctive contribution is to connect rigorous limits on tariff exceptions with support for a strong peasantry, while separating that support from the preservation of established landed rents.