Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Jared Bernstein rightly bemoans the hostility to immigrants that is helping to fuel the political rise of Donald Trump (“Brexit and Trump: When politicians light xenophobic fires, everybody gets burned,” June 22). And Mr. Bernstein correctly blames this hostility of many Americans on “years of conservative rhetoric about how the ‘others’ are ripping them off.”
Yet Mr. Bernstein is in no position to point accusing fingers. He has a long record of blaming international trade for inflicting economic harm on ordinary Americans – meaning that he himself has been a chief contributor to years of “Progressive” rhetoric about how the ‘others’ are ripping Americans off.
If as Mr. Bernstein seemingly believes (and as I certainly do believe) that we have nothing to fear from goods and services produced by non-Americans living in America to be sold here as domestically produced outputs, why should we fear goods and services produced by non-Americans living abroad to be sold here as imports?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercator Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
