I didn't say they were important. Big government did. I hate big government. So instead of taxing Americans more, when they are already overtaxed, I would demand that government be forced to confiscate less of our money. At the same time I would argue that government should have much less influence over what free people freely choose to purchase, and who they choose to purchase from.
...but then let any company of any size complete skirt them by going overseas and completely cutting out the US labor and environmental regulations.
Instead of making American consumers pay more, and allowing government to take more of our money while becoming more powerful, perhaps we should reduce the size and scope of government so our industries can better compete. That sounds like a conservative solution to me.
We have a debt we need to pay, a deficit current and a budget to fill. If you have three choices to cover those which do you pick first: rank and file tax payers, US corps, imports. The logical answer is imports should be taxed first, and US last just like we had for 135 years. Add in the required regulatory, environmental, and wage cost regulations and imports should still be 40-60% of our taxes collected like it was for most of our countries history