Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
How can you be so foolish as to oppose tariffs on quartz surface products (“Tariffs That Are as Dumb as Rocks,” June 1)?
As for me, I thank the U.S. government for protecting us poor, hapless Americans from heedlessly purchasing, at low prices, imported quartz surface products and thereby harming our great country!
Who cannot see that such protectionism is essential for America to guard herself against the wiles of the Chinese? Who dares deny that quartz surface products are a critical good for which we must, by all means, avoid dependence on foreigners? Who will not acknowledge the obvious strategic importance – to both America’s economy and national defense – of the quartz-surface-products industry? Who is so myopic as to overlook all the spin-off technological benefits that we Americans will enjoy by producing our own quartz surface products?
And who is so cynical as to portray U.S quartz-surface-products producers’ quest for protection as self-interested rather than as patriotic?
I’ll tell you who! Globalist cosmopolitan elite heads-up-their-butts academic economic “experts,” that’s who! Only they are blind to the fact that an American economy that imports too much quartz surface product is an American economy in perilous decline. Let every American of common sense join me in expressing gratitude to our government for protecting this vital industry and putting America first
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
