This refers to “Protectionist folly” (March 3). The article clearly shows that for a country so steeped in “free market”, the US has shown some striking protectionist tendencies. It must be clearly understood that outsourcing is not an act of charity or benevolence, but purely a cost-cutting measure in the larger interest of the Americans. A service that can be outsourced, but is not, costs many times more. It’s no wonder that manufacturing, particularly in textile and electronics, has moved out of the US in a big way. A survey conducted by the Association for Computing Machinery in the US suggested that only one in 75 students would major in computer science, compared with one in 30 in 2000. The study concluded that dire predictions of job losses resulting from shifting high-technology work to low-wage nations with strong education systems, such as India and China, were highly exaggerated. It is time the US industry strongly opposes the unreasonable protectionist tendencies of its government.
M M Gurbaxani, Bangalore