Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Reporting on the U.S.-Korea free-trade pact, you write that “South Korea agreed to give the U.S. five years to phase out a 2.5% tariff it levies on Korean-built cars, rather than cutting the tariff immediately” (“U.S., Korea Agree on Free-Trade Pact,” Dec. 3).
In other words, South Korea agreed to allow Uncle Sam to continue to impose additional financial burdens on Americans who buy automobiles made in South Korea, for no reason other than to make life easier for Detroit.
So much for the Obama administration’s courageous refusal to allow special-interest groups (in this case, U.S. automakers and the UAW) to dictate policy – so much for our leader’s eagerness to get the policy right even if doing so means getting the politics wrong – and so much for all the ballyhoo, out of Detroit and Washington, about U.S. automakers again being world-class producers who can compete successfully with foreign automakers.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
