To the Editor:

Professor Donald J. Boudreaux’s views against government-financed adjustment assistance to workers harmed by free trade (“Compensate Workers Harmed by Trade?” November 2001) seem well-taken-except for one thing. The influence of freer trade on competition between domestic and imported products isn’t a natural phenomenon like a climate change. Rather, it’s a market transformation to which government has contributed by removing or substantially reducing longstanding import restrictions (for example, tariffs or quotas).

When such government decisions (in the interest of advancing the overall national interest) materially contribute to serious injury to U.S. workers, companies, and communities long dependent on production of the affected products, government should be prepared to help them make timely adjustments to this contingency. Such assistance, which should be of reasonable scope and limited duration, is economically sound, morally warranted, and vital to the viability of free trade as public policy.

-David J. Steinberg

Alexandria, Virginia

Donald Boudreaux replies:

I agree with Mr. Steinberg’s premise that government’s discretionary use of its powers can harm innocent people, but I differ from him on what I take as my benchmark for judging the appropriateness of any change in policy. My benchmark is that set of conditions that would exist with government doing nothing more than protecting people against violence and theft. Under these conditions, consumers would be free to buy goods and services from whomever and from wherever they choose. Tariffs and other restraints on trade violate this freedom. This violation creates special privileges for those domestic firms and workers who benefit from this artificial protection. From its start, this privilege is illegitimate. To lift it is merely to put an end to a monopoly privilege that never should have been conferred in the first place.

If the police devote more resources to stopping mugging in Central Park, the government surely owes nothing to displaced muggers. It’s the same with trade restraints. When the government performs better the legitimate function of protecting rights and freedoms, those who benefited from government’s earlier failure to perform this function–or, especially, those who benefited from government’s active facilitation of rights violations–are owed no special assistance.