Any one still supporting Free Trade with Communist China....yep this is on you....
Massive corporate taxation, limitless legal vulnerability, crushing environmental regulation and pro-Union arbitrary Government: these are why industry chooses to locate away from the USA.
Protectionism would be the final nail in the coffin. The last vestiges of American industry would be turned into feather-bedded welfare cases, and freeborn Americans would be forced to buy their stuff from the Government store.
Protectionism would also increase Government power. The Democrats will collect all of that lovely tariff money and spend it on union pension bailouts or some damn thing.
America has tied its own hands behind its back with a ludicrous knot of EPA regulations, crushing taxation and arbitrary Government (just ask Gibsons guitars).
America needs to untie those knots - not wrap itself up in more of them in a fit of misplaced faux-patriotic anger.
Its not all bad news. You guys really do have a way out. Natural gas is going to save America. But will America turn into an immoral extraction economy like Saudi, or will it wisely return to its can-do anti-statist roots?