The Fair Trade Fraud: How Congress Pillages the Consumer and Decimates American Competitiveness

If you still believe that the US is the epitome of free trade, this book is for you. (If you don't, this could be for use as ammunition) This book chronicles the harm of protectionism (higher prices) and the many shams put on by the US government in the name of old fashioned protectionism. Whether it's farms, textiles or industrial goods, Bovard highlights the problems and perils of protectionism - by whatever name it goes by. The only big issue is the book's date - 1992. A lot has happened since then in both free trade, and unfree trade. (It would be interesting to know Bovard's take on NAFTA and the recent steel tariffs) For even more politically tense works, you can read his more current bookes.

James Bovard is in my view the most objective, incisive investigative journalist on the planet (past or present). Like Freedom In Chains, Lost Rights, Feeling your Pain, Terrorism and Tyranny, The Bush Betrayal, and Shakedown(How the Govt screws you from A to Z), James is a master at identifying the criminal excesses of government operating outside the bounds of the Constitution sub calore juris, sub pretexto juris. James also provides enoough documentation to engender the hatred of the collectivist-socialist members of both houses of Congress and the collectivist-socialist media who would burn him at the stake for exposing them if it were possible for them to do so. If readers want to view a long list of abuses and usurpations which identify "what the Government is doing to us", who is responsible and why, like Lemming we are all marching over the proverbial cliff followng the leader while ignoring the greatness we once almost achieved under an almost laissez faire Capitalist system, read all of James Bovards books. he is the best! So say I, Dr. Robert Ingram Powell, Ph.D. [email protected]

Bovard does a great job exposing protectionist idiocy, and his writing style makes a somewhat dry subject interesting.

I bought the book because Bovard clearly wasn't one of the two-week Okura Experts. For those not familiar with the local jargon, Okura Experts are Washington, D.C. appointees who run our trade policy based on a two week stay at the Okura, a luxury hotel near the American Embassy in Tokyo.Like me, Bovard has been in the trenches and seen trade issues in Japan face-to-face. If you are willing to discard your media managed notions about how Japan cheats and is unfair on trade and look at the whole picture, this book is well worth the read.Bovard is neither an apologist nor a basher, but I'll guarantee that if you read this book, you will never look at trade issues in the same way again.

Bovard clearly expounds on the fact that our very own government is hiking the prices of consumer goods through the vehicle of trade restrictions. Via anti-dumping, quotas, arbitrary tariffs, and other forms of trade restrictions, America is violating the very principle of the free market that it worships. Full of countless statistics and facts (look at the number of footnotes), Bovard belabors his point beyond the threshold of absurdity.