I think out tax code could be used to great effect.
Tax imports.
Ah yes of course it is. Because like all the closet statists on FR you love the Government and you think we should have more of it.
Tariffs are just another way for the Government and their tame unions to seize money from wealth-producers.
Tariffs would trap Americans into buying domestic production no matter how unionized or expensive it was. The US already has enough prisons - there's no need to make the whole country into one!
America is doing badly because it is treating capital badly.
America is acting as if it hated wealth-producers (unless they use their wealth to support Obama). People who want to produce wealth in America face formidable legal, environmental and tax burdens. They also face an increasingly irrational and arbitrary legislature.
That's why business-owners choose not to invest their hard-earned capital in building factories and other physical plant in America. They are taking THEIR wealth and they are placing it where it won't get stolen or suborned.