Taxpayers get the bill

Re “A Trade Boom’s Unintended Costs,” April 23

There is nothing “unintended” by these costs; they are plain to anyone who thinks in the larger picture. Our industrial elite exports our manufacturing base to China and India but, in order to get the (cheaper) goods back, they must pay for the transportation to get them to our stores.

But who pays for the port expansion, the pollution, the roads and rails and trucks and more pollution? Certainly not the industrialists who reap the original profits. The taxpayer will pay twice for the privilege: once to lose the job that went overseas, and again to pay for the infrastructure to re-import the products.

MAUDE HAM

Burbank