“Intellectual property will be stolen immediately
How?”
Government enforces patents and copyrights - without Government there is no protection, and knock-off products are quick to market. This is obvious. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-pompeo/pompeo-says-china-trade-policies-predatory-idUSKBN1JE2QK
“fraud will be rampant
How? Government is the main perpetrator of fraud in the U.S.”
What prevents someone from mislabeling products, and defrauding customers? Government Law Enforcement. Without Government enforcing the law, criminals are free to sell tablets of plaster dust as antibiotics, or any other type of fraud. Such product adulteration and fraud is widely practiced in China, and many such Chinese products are currently illegally sold to US consumers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_incidents_in_China
“competitors like communist China will subsidize their manufacturers to undersell ours and drive ours out of business
How?”
They have bee doing it wholesale for 25 years. The Government of China subsidizes the industries that they want to take over, so they can sell below cost, and competitors are driven out of business. Recently, manufacturers were able to buy finished copper tube from Chinese suppliers, below the current price of an equal amount of raw copper. China also manipulates their currency, to make all their products cheaper in dollars, to create the same effect across the board, beyond the industries they specifically subsidize. Then they apply high tariffs and non-tariff barriers to US (and other countries) imports, to preserve their domestic market to support their domestic industries. https://www.aei.org/publication/how-china-cheats/
“Government is the main perpetrator in dulling U.S. competitive edge.”
This sounds like just an article of faith on your part. Face it - everybody gets act, and there are a lot of bad actors out there, who will lie cheat and steal. The communist Chinese have made it a main thrust of their organized Government policy for a quarter of a century.
Does taxing our own American consumers in the form of tariffs give us a competitive edge?
Yes, that is why countries do it. It can level the unfair cost advantage of foreign competitors.
What prevents someone from mislabeling products, and defrauding customers?
The voluntary cooperation between buyers and sellers in the free market where demand will drop and soon put whoever is doing this out of business.
Government is the main perpetrator in dulling U.S. competitive edge" is a "article" of FACT not fiction.
The federal government - the main perps of our economic malaise: Imposing suffocating HIGH TAXES, unconstitutional dead-end REGULATIONS, unconstitutional business-and-job-killing FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE, and engaging in basically unconstitutional SUBSIDES (BRIBES) FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS. They also stupidly DESTABILIZE & DEVALUE THE DOLLAR. Result? Business fleeing our country's anti-business climate and gross economic failure.
And BTW, other counties do a lot of stupid things, almost all of them being Socialist. Since when does America, the leader of the free world, become a stupid follower and shoot itself in the foot because other countries are shooting themselves in the foot?
I expect leftists to ignore/deny these things, but not people on a site called FREE Republic that is supposed to be for freedom and limited government.