When someone says that liberalism cannot be reduced to economic thought alone, they are not wrong. But anyone who wants to discuss liberalism and its ideas must know that the first liberals, who rightly called themselves that, were advocates of free trade. That is why they got that name. Smith's famous book "The Wealth of Nations" has one main message: it pays for nations to open up to trade with other nations. The nation that trades more will prosper faster and better.

That was the initial political idea and goal of liberalism. Many other ideas later developed from it, but liberalism has the free market at its root. That is the very core. When someone says that he is a #liberal and does not believe in #freedom of enterprise and trade, he is thinking of something else, certainly not classical #liberalism.