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I heard the other day that India's tariffs are some of the highest in the world.

I've been in this type of debate a few times here. It amazes me how there is a strong component here that doesn't care. They see their stock prices rise, or they are involved in offshoring, it's good for them, so they cling to the "free market".
I bring up unfair tariffs, (as you mention), the inequity in pollution control and worker safety, the squalid conditions for people in other countries, (essentially slave labor). None of that matters to our free market friends. Their retort is chanted long and loud: Re-train, start your own business, you are on your own. Don't look to government to pick my pocket to pay for your job!
It has been mentioned that the government, OUR government, is actively funding moves overseas, as well as foreign governments providing inducements. Is this a fair playing field? No! But the free market proponents don't even address that.
Finally, one bright gentleman mentioned that when the U.S. was the primary trading partner with Great Britain in the late 19th early 20th century that the U.S. had restrictive tariffs, and Great Britain was strongly entrenched in a free market phiolosphy, (again, an unfair playing field). What happened? The U.S. overtook G.B. in wealth, and economic power. There are complex reasons for this, but are tariffs a factor? It's a fact that it happened.

What happened? The U.S. overtook G.B. in wealth, and economic power. There are complex reasons for this, but are tariffs a factor? It's a fact that it happened.

The fact that the U.S. population, resource base, transportation infrastructure, etc. far exceeded anything that Great Britain had to offer was the major cause of this, not the tariffs. In fact, if you look at Great Britain compared to the rest of the world in these areas I mentioned, it's a wonder they managed to remain an economic power for as long as they did.

Something that everyone needs to keep in mind here is that the United States is facing the same basic dilemma that every modern society has faced -- and every developing nation will face, too. The dilemma is that there will always be a trade-off between our standard of living and our ability to compete in a global marketplace -- and there is simply no way of avoiding this. Europeans like to think they enjoy a very high standard of living -- and yet the cost of maintaining that standard of living is an "institutional unemployment rate" (that is, the unemployment rate that is considered "full employment" for the economic conditions at any given time) that is continually rising and now hovers somewhere around 10%.

The only way there will ever be truly free trade is if American workers are just as willing to live in huts with no electricity and work in unsafe conditions for a dollar a day, as foreign workers are willing to do so at what seems to them to be a good wage. Of course this will never happen, and it should not. We deserve to have a modern, decent standard of living. As long as the third world is in poverty and desperate to take our jobs for pennies, and corporate CEOs with seven-figure salaries who will do anything to increase their personal wealth, there will never be free trade.