Intellectual property will be stolen immediately
How?
fraud will be rampant
How? Government is the main perpetrator of fraud in the U.S.
competitors like communist China will subsidize their manufacturers to undersell ours and drive ours out of business
How? Government is the main perpetrator in dulling U.S. competitive edge. Does taxing our own American consumers in the form of tariffs give us a competitive edge?
Again, you again want to mix up free trade with fair trade. Again, free trade is the market economy WITHOUT government interference. "Fair trade" is government-forced "level playing field" which is illusory.
"A society that puts [government-forced] "equality" ahead of freedom will have neither equality nor freedom. But a society that puts freedom ahead of equality will have a great deal of both." - Milton Friedman.
“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.
To balance the difference in labor costs between the USA and the 3rd world would not take much. Frankly, most manufacturing is not labor intensive. That's the point of mass production. Maybe 7% of retail prices goes to labor, and that's for domestic union labor.