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Here’s a letter to a frequent correspondent:
Mr. Y__:
In response to my recent letter to National Review [2] you argue that I “remove every bit of credibility from the case for free trade even [by] comparing protectionism to criminal activity.”
I stand by my comparison.
Suppose the CEO of the local tire-manufacturing plant hires agents to stand on the wharves to do violence to buyers of imported tires if those buyers refuse to pay these workers big bucks for each imported tire that they buy. You would agree, I trust, that this action is criminal. But how does this action substantively differ from that same CEO persuading Congress to hire agents to stand on the wharves to do violence to buyers of imported tires if those buyers refuse to pay these workers big bucks for each imported tire that they buy?
I see only two substantive differences between the two cases, each of which is unfavorable to the second case. In the first case, the CEO pays for his own protectionist enforcers (rather than use enforcers paid for by taxpayers), and he probably doesn’t insult his victims’ intelligence with idiotic assurances that his banditry is for the country’s greater good.
It’s true that, unlike privately enforced protectionism, government-enforced protectionism is widely regarded as legitimate. One of my goals, as an economics educator, is to reveal the folly of treating any form of protectionism as legitimate. It’s all banditry.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030