… is from page 32 of Jin W. Lee’s May 1987 Master’s thesis in economics at Virginia Tech – a thesis, directed by the late David Meiselman, titled “The Cost of the Voluntary Export Restraint of Japanese Automobile Exports to the United States“:
The estimates show that the VER cost U.S. consumers an additional $1.0 billion in 1981, $2.7 billion in 1982, $2.6 billion in 1983, and $3.4 billion in 1984, for a combined total of $9.7 billion during 1981 — 1984….
The consumer cost of creating each new job was $334,000.
DBx: Using the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index to convert 1987 dollars into 2024 dollars, this latter figure is $780,450.
Only economically uninformed protectionists think that such a waste of resources increases the prosperity of the masses of the nation.
