Imagine this: US iron miners, thanks to revolutionary technology that can extract iron from once-useless rock, double their production in 5 years, creating hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth, contributing to steel production for billions of people around the world, and making America a world leader in iron once again.

The production explosion is so big that domestic steel mills can’t keep up, but that needn’t be a problem. There are plenty of international steel mills that will buy US iron and make it into steel that we or anyone else in the world can buy—at ever-lower prices, thanks to the growing supply of iron and steel on the market.

What if, instead of liberating this beneficent combination of domestic production and international trade, the government xenophobically insisted on banning the export of iron—“crude steel”—even though every other industry, including steelmakers, is (properly) allowed to sell the products it produces to buyers around the world?

Read the full article at Forbes.com: The Case For Liberating Oil Exports