I don't entirely disagree with Trump nor do I disagree with you but I believe no one is really speaking to the root issue.
The root issue isn't jobs or the economy. Rather it is choices that America has made. Choices that most of us still agree with.
We want equal opportunity. We want a clean environment. We do not want children in the work place. We do not want an unsafe work place. We want reasonable work hours. We have passed laws on all of these issues and generally I believe Americans agree with their sentiments. These decisions are costing us due to the taxes and regulations that we have chosen to enact.
But other countries have not agreed with us. Other countries still pollute more, use children, have harsh working conditions, etc. That allows them to pay lower wages (or no wages at all in some cases). That's fine. That's their choice.
The problem comes up when American consumers buy products from those countries. And I would argue that most Americans do this without really thinking and without really understanding the consequences of their actions. This is the root of the issue. And the solution is not taxes or laws or penalties or incentives. The solution is education.
What I'd like is a label on each product with a letter from A to F. A is good, F is failing. The letter on the product is based upon where the product comes from and where the components of the product come from. e.g. if the final assembly of the car is in the states but all the parts come from China, I want it to have a much lower rating than a car that has all the components come from the states as well as the final assembly. It needs to be weighted somehow but everything needs to be clear, open, and relatively simple. Twenty 8x10 pages would be the limit of how the grading system works -- not 20,000 impenetrable pages of self contradictory lies.
Actually, it is not really "from" that matters. What matters is if the country as a whole has lax pollution, work, and health laws, if the site where the product is being produced is polluting, and if the site where the product is produced has the work standards that we value as well as wages of the workers compared to the surrounding area's cost of living.
This would allow "good" producers to exist within "bad" countries. Their letter grade would not be A but it would not be F either. These "good" produces would create internal pressure to their governments to clean up the country's laws so their grade could go from, say, C to B and that would make them more attractive to American consumers.
Utopia would be if this rating system was internationally recognized but then we would get into international politics much like the UN. As much as I hate big government and government waste, I would consider supporting a federal entity that would develop this type of system. I would start small and label each country as a whole. And if a particular producer asked for a better grade, then some process would be developed where they could earn a higher grade.
After that... I would still want everything to be by choice. A company may or may not put the label on its product and consumers may or may not choose to consider it.
The only laws needed may be for fraud when a company mislabels a product -- but those laws probably already exist.
It would be a "do gooder" campaign much like organic sustainable farming is today. I believe many of the mid and low income Americans would want to try to buy A products rather than F products if it is at all possible for them to do so because they would know in the long run it will benefit them to buy A products rather than F products.
Lets backup and address that last statement. Why would it benefit them? It benefits them due to a number of reasons. There is no point to legislate for a clean environment when other counties continue to pollute and there is no incentive to the other countries to clean their act up if Americans continue to buy their goods. Likewise, while we might reduce hazardous work places in the US, if other counties profit from hazardous work areas, then we are only hurting ourselves. Sure we have safe work areas but they are all empty. The net of human suffering hasn't decreased when this occurs. It has just move overseas and out of sight.
If everything is kept optional, then the other countries would have a great incentive to clean up their environment and their work places. They could not scream "protectionism" because the US government isn't doing anything except educating their citizens.
The stick and the carrot are not working. Its time to try the apple.
I'm going to try to get this same message to my senators and representative but I have very little hope they will do anything.
Thank you for your time,
Perry Smith
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