So for a 15% increase in price, I'd create American workers to pay taxes for building our infrastructure, military, and space program instead of China's. At the same time, I'd be reducing the burden of paying for the unemployment benefits for those same workers.
Maybe some free traitor would like to explain why that wouldn't be better for us in the long run.
Oh, and I almost forgot. They have no concept of intellectual property and they will rob you blind.
I am a free trader (or, as you so cleverly stated it, a “free traitor”). A little bit of Econ I would be in order here, as well as some history. The last time we had a policy of reducing free trade, it was one of the contributing factors that led to the Great Depression and World War II.
Before your heads explode, let me assure you that I believe that trade deals have to be fair and if they are not, we shouldn’t get into them. That said, having a president “telling” an independent company where they are allowed to produce product is a bit tyrannical, don’t you believe? For anyone who believes that we should have a constitutionally-constrained president instead of a dictator, please let me know where is it in the Constitution that the President is given this power?
That big point aside, and assuming there are no security issues, companies should produce product wherever they can get the lowest cost / highest quality, period. That is their objective: to maximize shareholder profit. Or should we have a command controlled economy where a king tells companies where and how they should produce products?
Furthermore, any time you force a company to produce in a place where the costs are higher and / or the quality is lower, the cost to the consumer goes up and the quality goes down. Then what will you do when foreign producers manufacture higher quality, lower cost phones? Put a huge tariff on them so the cost goes even higher still to the US consumer? If you do this, the consumer will of course lose. Then what would happen? Do you think that other countries will not do the same thing? The end result is a “beggar thy neighbor” situation whereby world trade decreases, prices rise, quality decreases, and the world GDP goes down. Everyone becomes poorer and the world becomes a more dangerous place.
Not exactly “winning”, is it?
The better strategy is to negotiate fair trade deals and let the cards fall where they may. It’s called “competition”, and it works really well. If China has cheaper workers, the US should move up the value chain and have better engineers, who make more per hour. That’s how the US becomes more rich— by providing more value, not by competing for low wage manufacturing jobs by imposing a command and control economy.