To the Editor:
Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns suggest that we need to abandon free
trade. They will not get many economists to agree; free trade is
virtually the economists’ religion.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that workers in developed countries are now
being offered a kind of competition that they never had to face before:
people abroad who can do their job well enough, yet will work for wages
that are a small fraction of theirs.
Our workers are facing a substantial drop in their standard of living
and continued high unemployment. The political results of such a trend
could be disastrous.
There used to be barriers against low-wage competition—namely, the
inability of low-wage workers to be sufficiently productive—but these
barriers now are gone. New ones have to be erected, mainly in the form
of tariffs.
Barbara R. Bergmann
Washington, Sept. 11, 2010
The writer is professor emerita of economics at the University of Maryland and American University.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 