Trade rules harmful

American ingenuity alone cannot compete with nonreciprocal trade restrictions, illegal currency manipulation, unrestricted theft of intellectual properties, slave wages and destructive environmental manufacturing practices.

Without demanding fair trade from all countries we do business with, we will never again be able to create enough living wage jobs in this country to return America to the prosperity of recent decades. More importantly, without a strictly enforced fair trade policy, American workers will never again make enough to pay sufficient taxes to:

1. Pay back or even maintain the massive debt we have saddled future Americans with.

2. Continue Social Security and Medicare benefits at anywhere near their current levels.

3. Avoid making massive cuts in military spending, by as much as half or even more.

Free trade means only the freedom to dump most decent American jobs and to continue our headfirst dive into an economic meltdown or catastrophic proportions.

William Betz

Newport, Wash.