Protectionism is no road to prosperity: Letter

Sir: Edward Luttwak argues that by raising tariffs America's employment and standards of living will rise. What he calls for is a policy analogous to the Import Substitution policies advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for developing nations: high tariffs would allow the development of indigenous manufacturing and so on. In practice these policies have been utter failures, successful only in raising prices and lowering quality without raising the standard of living of workers.

David Fitch

Department of Geography

University of Edinburgh