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You need to get out more. If you did, you would know that there many many very small American companies manufacturing great products and selling them abroad like hotcakes.

Exports drive the american economy. To try to impose tariffs to save jobs or make jobs return is not only not possible but terribly regressive. The past was.

There is a presumption in your post that corporations, especially large corporations are heartless meanies concerned only with profits. That is mostly not true but the part about profits is correct. The purpose of a business in a free, non socialist, nonindustrial policied free country is to make a profit.

I recently spoke with a young man from Brazil. He was visiting us on his month long government mandated 30 day vacation. He is a pilot and has tons of frequent flyer miles. He was here to buy stuff. Stuff that in Brazil costs many many times more than here because of the tariffs. People unfortunate enough to notbe able to trvel abroad do with out or py through the nose. That is what the tarrif folks advocate....... doing without or having extremely limited choice of often inferior goods.

there many many very small American companies manufacturing great products and selling them abroad like hotcakes.

I agree, and I agree that it is a good thing. Actually, however, in 2009, companies of 500 or more employees exported about 67% of the total dollar volume of exports according to census export data. Both small and large companies do contribute to exports - which are important because American imports significantly more than it exports.

Exports drive the american economy.

In 2011, the GDP was $15.075 trillion, exports were $1.497 trillion, about 10%, so somewhere around 90% of GDP is domestic. America is not an export-driven economy; it's role globally is much more that of the most desired consumer market for other nations, since it's sheer size and per capita income levels make it the best market to sell in. Contrast it with the German economy to understand an economy that is quite dependent on exports.

There is a presumption in your post that corporations, especially large corporations are heartless meanies concerned only with profits. That is mostly not true but the part about profits is correct. The purpose of a business in a free, non socialist, nonindustrial policied free country is to make a profit.

I never implied "heartless" or anything emotional. If you carefully review, you'll see that I was pointing out that they are oftten unwise for the long term good of their own business. Just look at GM for an example of this. For all their outsourcing, caving in to union demands and political correctness, they still are running into the ground. Numerous very rich men who ran businesses back in the day, such as Milton S. Hersey, realized the mutually-beneficial relationship between his business endeavors and the local town, state and nation. IMHO, if I owned a $10 billion in sales American business, I would certainly be interested in employing Americans - to work as efficiently as possible - so that my business would be running in a nation of citizens that had money in their pockets to spend. That's simply a long-term strategy for my business being able to keep that Sales figure going in the right direction year after year.

Any way you look at it, 20+ million unemployed in America is bad for business. The more people earn from productive work, the more they can spend - without being a burden on anyone else. The will have earned their money. If they are handed the money without producing anything, however, everyone pays for that in the form of higher prices, or higher prices and higher taxes.

My intent in my post was to point out that simply throwing tariffs on our imports is not the fix for our economic problems.

I recently spoke with a young man from Brazil. He was visiting us on his month long government mandated 30 day vacation. He is a pilot and has tons of frequent flyer miles. He was here to buy stuff. Stuff that in Brazil costs many many times more than here because of the tariffs. People unfortunate enough to notbe able to trvel abroad do with out or py through the nose. That is what the tarrif folks advocate....... doing without or having extremely limited choice of often inferior goods.

Just to review from my post:

"a phenomenon that is much too large for ordinary tariffs to fix underlying root causes of our malaise"

"Putting big enough tariffs on big business may cause them to stop importing, but it may cause them to do other things that would hurt and may indeed not cause them to do other things that are desired, like hiring more Americans."

"Also, IMHO, it’s important to note that tariffs will naturally come to be relied upon by the businesses they benefit, as they will have an alternative to pursuing efficiency in order to increase their profits: they can pursue their Congressmen to increase tariffs a bit."

"These and a large list of other problems are making it extremely and even increasingly difficult to do business here, which simple tariffs do not address at all."

"In contrast, developing Asian economies are also run by elites and are facing tremendous, ever-increasing problems. IMHO, dramatic tariff increases may soon fade from the conversation." (meaning, may become obviously not necessary)

So while I don't know the current tariffs and can't offer an opinion as to specific changes, I'm just expressing that I don't think that raising tariffs on the Chinese is a magic fix-it. I hope this clears up my meaning.