Cokie and Stephen Roberts, in their column Monday, Jan. 27, recommend free trade. Doesn’t that sound nice? Well, it’s not. It is bad. Very bad.

One may note the tidal wave of industry and manufacturing that fled overseas after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. There is such a thing as cause and effect. 

How about fair trade? They have to play by the same rules, as do we, or vice versa.

I won’t forget the story told by Newt Gingrich: The French could not increase their exports of Champagne to Japan although they knew there was a good market for it. Their protests to the Japanese diplomats came to naught. The French then passed a regulation that every VCR imported to France had to be inspected by a French inspector.

They hired a dozen sick, lame and lazy inspectors and soon the warehouses were full with Japanese VCRs awaiting inspection. Orders dropped off. The Japanese protested to the French diplomats. They were told that if the Japanese would accept an increase in the importation of Champagne, perhaps their inspectors could work a little faster.

That’s called fair trade. 

You use your rules to restrict our imports, we will use the same tactics.

That being said, I recommend a 200 percent Communist slave labor tax on Chinese imports.

Or, even better, treat them just like we treat our Communist Cuban neighbors: no imports at all.

-Frank Novotny, Biddeford