Books, Arts & Manners: Shipping of Fools

The Fair Trade Fraud, by James Bovard (St. Martin’s, 328 pp., $24.95)

THE trade warriors are on the loose. House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt demands sanctions against the Japanese; the U.S. International Trade Commission imposes penalties on imported liquidcrystal computer screens; the Customs Service seizes Chinese-made clothing. These are but a few examples of a policy that is, in the words of James Bovard, a prolific antagonist of Washington’s many loot-minded interest groups, sacrificing “Americans’ freedom and prosperity . . . on an altar of fair trade.”