Lescroart Falls Into The Protectionist Fallacy

To the editors:



In her column “Overvalued Legislation” (Oct. 17), Justine R. Lescroart misses the point in her critique of legislation that would attempt to “correct” the trade balance between China and the United States. Her concern that taxing Chinese imports will hurt China’s economy and create a political precedent for protectionism in the world is probably accurate.

However, the main reason we should not be worried about the undervalued yuan is that the major consequence– “allowing Chinese businesses to produce products... whose prices are lower than the prices of their American-made counterparts,” is in fact beneficial for the United States. Cheap imports are an incredible boon for Americans, a fact that is evident to anyone who has been to Wal-Mart. In her critique of certain protectionist policies, Lescroart falls into the general protectionist fallacy of seeing the availability of cheap products for Americans as a bad thing simply because those products come from outside our borders.



DANIEL P. ROBINSON ’10

Cambridge, MA

October 17, 2007