There are working conditions so bad in certain countries that some people's initial reaction is to support a ban on products from those places. Many people also think it wise to demand certain standards on wages, environmental protection and worker health and safety.
This thinking is hard to argue with until one remembers just how bad working conditions were in the U.S, at one time, and the damage that was done to our environment during our rapid industrialization.
If we had insisted on these same standards for our own economy while we were becoming affluent we never would have made it.
But, on the other hand, we can't require every country in the world to match the U.S. law-for-law and restriction-for-restriction.
Agreed. Insisting on additional regulations in other countries, under threat of tariffs or other sanctions, that improve wages, working conditions or the environment will deliver the undesirable effect of eliminating many of those jobs.
Denying a country the ability to take advantage of their poverty, when that's what they have the greatest supply of, would be unfortunate and is no way to develop future markets for our products and services.
Encouraging trade to developing [countries] with lower rates is a good thing, not exploitation.
Too many people see low wages as exploitative but can never answer why it isn't better for a man to take the work available to him and provide the basics for survival than it is not have work at all and starve.
I think we agree on more than we disagree.
ok, i am not in disagreement with what you are saying...
and this is not my argument, but for argument sake, how do you counter it:
everything that anyone does in the U.S. can be done cheaper elsewhere (manufacturing, information technology, services industries, etc.). how does one balance the desire to spread the wealth by moving industries, and now information, to poverty stricken countries without bankrupting yourself by eliminating the market?
is it a valid long term goal for the U.S. to be purely a consumer oriented services industry? there certainly must be cons to that.