If we remove all our labor protections and import enough illiterate illegal aliens to work for next to nothing, then eventually our economy should be able to compete with those third world countries that produce all the cheap crap that we are so willing to mortgage our future to buy.
Competition is the best answer, but giving every other country but ours a head start in that race by placing regulations and restrictions upon our own companies that our competition does not have is hardly the way to ensure that we come out ahead when the race is finished.
True competition requires a level playing field. Unfortunately the only way to level the field is to lay tariffs on goods imported from countries that essentially "dump" their products by non-compliance with the same regulations that apply to US Companies. But we will not do that until it is too late. Global Companies will do all within their power to ensure that goods made by their companies in third world snakepits will have free access to American markets until such time as America can no longer afford to import anything. At that point we will be one of those third world countries and the playing field will be leveled, as will most of our domestic industries.
So long as we don’t have a totally free market agreement with any other country, then I agree that that country should have tariffs placed upon it.
In the long run, though, technology overcomes manpower in terms of productivity, and, therefore, in terms of price.
The true future is in becoming the masters of technology.