How silly you are. A "conservative" like yourself who complains about "artificially high wages" apparently views the prosperity of the American people as a problem to be corrected by flooding the labor market with Third World labor. It has not entered your brain to wonder what is conserved when communities and livelihoods are destroyed and buying power is drained from middle class Americans to the point where it now takes twice as long as it did a generation ago to purchase a new car. In Libertarian fashion you are not a conservative at all. You are a Jacobin willing to sacrifice the American people to radical theory and your vision of a pure world. Has it entered your brain that a political party that thinks that American wages are "artificially high" isn't going to get very far ?
It's a Sham when a "conservative" quotes the former leader of the "Liberal Unionists" of England (Joseph Chamberlain) as somehow prescient--a man who was a self-proclaimed Imperialist in his basic approach to economics.
Silly one, who in Britain wasn't an imperialist in 1900 ? Chamberlain saw quite clearly that if Britain did not shift to protection it's industrial base would be destroyed. And that is exactly what happenned. Britain's industrial base could not meet the demands of two world wars.
And technological changes do not impact disposable income. A 4.0 gig Pentium 4 costs as much as a state of the art IBM XT in 1983. I can't spend the improvement in quality of the Pentium 4 over the XT. It is useful to me but the difference does not pay my bills.
As the great Americans quoted above demonstrated, the cause of protectionism is the cause of true conservatives. True conservatives, unlike you, are not willing to sacrifice their families and communities and nation to pure radical theory. True conservatives see the well being of their country and their loved ones as a good thing and fight to protect them. True conservatives understand that there is a higher moral and societal good than maximizing shareholder equity. Like a Jacobin, you have only contempt for the masses of people and see yourself as some kind of an elite above mere human attachments. Go plant bombs somewhere. There is no room for your kind in any conservative movement.
Well stated.
In the end, this is not a discussion of economics--it is a discussion of politics which shall separate those who have the National Interest (remember that phrase?) at heart, versus those who have Other Interests at heart--principally themselves.
The argument that the moneyed class' money enriches all is based on the fallacious presumption that the moneyed class will actively pursue the National Interest. Although it is a case-by-case proof or disproof, the fact that FDI in China has gone up and now surpasses FDI in the US is a warning.