OPINION:
It is amazing how poorly informed U.S. citizens are when it comes to our institutionalized, supply-side trade and economic policy. The primary function of this system is to supplant domestic productivity with foreign imports and services, not to secure export markets. Disparaging comments about proposed tariffs causing possible trade wars are misleading and inappropriate (“Trump tariffs hit $50 billion of Chinese goods,” Web, June 15).
The U.S. is the primary target for multinational importers because we are historically the greatest consumers. Tolerating illegal foreign trade practices coupled with no U.S. tariffs makes for huge multinational corporate import profits. When major “trade partners” do not reciprocate by opening their markets and instead act illegitimately in their own self interest, this is hardly a “free market.”
U.S.-sponsored trade practices against our own domestic manufacturers is causing such profound economic disparity and chronic, unsustainable national deficits as to invite ethical and constitutional judicial inquiry.
We are at a crossroads and so must decide whether the sacrifice of previous generations is worth emulating. Do we reinstate core policies of our democratic republic or continue the current, socially stratified, destructive policy typified by selfish, entertainment-based, elitist originators?
LOUIS L. BOEHM
Orchard Park, N.Y.
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