Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
President Trump should read your report on World Cup fans visiting from Europe being gob-smacked by America’s enormous wealth (“European Soccer Fans Marvel at the Splendor of America’s Suburbs,” June 27). How, for example, could the president continue to believe that Europeans have been “ripping us off in trade” when these visitors – most of whom are wealthy by European standards (otherwise they couldn’t afford to visit America) – continually express astonishment at ordinary Americans’ prosperity? How could he persist in thinking that American trade with Europe has been for us a ‘losing’ proposition when he encounters passages such as this one in your report?
The average American home is about 1,800 square feet, with new single-family homes measuring well over 2,000 square feet, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Europeans’ homes are about 1,100 square feet on average…. Such measures of wealth offer only a partial view of what it is like to live on these two continents. Europeans might earn less and own less stuff, but they also work less hours.
If we Americans have been ripped off in our trade with Europeans, why are we far wealthier than they are? If our so-called trade deficit with the E.U., as the president alleges, reveals that Europe has been “very unfair to our workers,” why are we paid more and have an unemployment rate of 4.3% while Europeans are paid less and have an unemployment rate of 6.0%?
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
