Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
You rightly decry Senator Katie Britt’s (R-AL) hypocrisy for seeking to exempt her constituents from the same Trump tariffs that she insists “work” (“One Senator’s Plea for Tariff Breaks,” September 15). But one other response is warranted to Sen. Britt’s public endorsement of Trump’s tariffs – tariffs that (as you quote her as saying) prevent our “return to the status quo of allowing American jobs and manufacturing to be sidelined in exchange for cheap junk from foreign adversaries.”
If Sen. Britt is correct that the tariffs work their wonders by preventing imports of cheap junk, it follows that the American jobs protected by the tariffs are ones that produce cheap junk.
One wonders why Sen. Britt and Pres. Trump believe that America is made great by ensuring that American workers are employed at producing cheap junk – that Americans then buy at artificially high prices.
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
……
I thank Ed Tower for suggesting the final phrase of this letter.
