It is not the trade rules. It is the regulation, the added G&A costs and in general the hostile business climate in the U.S.
Take a plant out of the country and you are instantly hit with (1) finding out how to do business there and then (2) that in a lot of areas it is infinitely easier and less costly.
For example, even putting in every single workplace safety rule and all the associated equipment is far, far less costly. You end up with a model plant at a small fraction of the cost.
No, it’s not the regulations or the taxes. It’s the labor cost. You could remove all the regulations and taxes in the U.S. and you still couldn’t compete with Chinese wages of $2/day for a 12 hour day.
And you wouldn’t want to remove all the regulations. A lot of them are there for good reason. Some need to go. But we need OSHA regs, we need some EPA regs. And we want Social programs. You can’t afford either the regs or the social programs if you let countries that don’t have them sell into your market without a tariff.
Our founding fathers had high tariffs. Tariffs before and during the roaring 20’s were in excess of 20%. We’ve lowered them to an effective average of 1%. Which means imports pay only a fraction as much taxes as domestic producers would pay. We’ve actually created an incentive to off shore.