England's Treasure by Foreign Trade was considered to be a direct repudiation of the arguments of Gerard de Malynes While Mun is often compared favorably to Josiah Child, another classic mercantilist. In it we find for the first time a clear statement of the theory of the balance of trade. According to Mun, trade was the only way to increase England’s treasure and in pursuit of this end he suggested several courses of action: frugal consumption in order to increase the amount of goods available for export, increased utilization of land and other domestic natural resources to reduce import requirements, lowering of export duties on goods produced domestically from foreign materials, and the export of goods with inelastic demand because more money could be made from higher prices.

Thomas Mun (17 June 1571 – 21 July 1641) was an English writer on economics who has been called the last of the early mercantilists. He was among the first to recognize the exportation of service, or invisible items, as valuable trade, and made early statements strongly in support of capitalism. He had a set of "means to enrich a kingdom" which supported foreign trade by means of exporting more than importing. In other words if you spend more than you make then your wealth will decrease. In order to increase your exports and decrease your imports he said that you must: 1. use all available resources, 2. Don't follow trends and if you do follow trends then only follow domestic ones, 3. export through your own means, and 4. if it is too expensive to buy locally then people will buy somewhere else.