Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
Jack Butler believes that, with regard to trade policy, the heart is in tension with the head (“Confession of a Cheap Imports Enjoyer,” December 10). The heart, he observes, pities “people whose local factories close,” while the head, for its part, informs us that free trade enriches the country at large. The former, alas, is concrete and touches our hearts; the latter is abstract and satisfies only our minds.
Mr. Butler misconstrues what’s in tension. The heart isn’t at odds with the head. The seen is at odds with the unseen.
Protectionists’ myopia allows them to see only the particular jobs that are destroyed by trade. Protectionists thus confine their heartfelt pity only to this select group of workers.
Free traders’ gaze is wider. They see that every job saved or created by protectionist measures is matched by a domestic job that those same measures destroy or prevent from being created. Seeing these – and other – wider consequences of protectionism, we free traders’ are moved by our hearts to oppose protectionism, for it is heartless to ignore not only consumers whose standards of living are reduced by protectionism, but other fellow citizens who lose jobs or who suffer lower wages as a result of protectionist measures.
Free traders, no less than protectionists, have caring and open hearts. The difference is that free traders, unlike protectionists, also have clear and open eyes.
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
