I'm not saying I'm for “free trade”. But if the U.S. wouldn't import then there would be hardly any products in the U.S. because the EPA has crippled U.S. manufacturing and is about to basically ban all new coal power plants (C02 global warming regulations).
Just take one example, energy production. The democrats have stopped nuclear power plant building,refinery building, oil shale,oil drilling in the U.S. and off U.S. coasts.
This makes electricity which is needed to manufacture products 10 times to 100 times more expensive than it needs to be.
There are also 100,000’s of thousands of more pages of anti-business and pro union laws and regulations that make most manufactoring unfeasible.
What needs to be done first is repeal all laws to 1890 when the government was limited.
The EPA has gone to excess in many areas, but we lost the electronics manufacturing industry and much of the textile and apparel industries in the '50s and '60s before the EPA came into existence during the Nixon administration. Why did we lose industries and manufacturing jobs before the EPA even existed.
This export of manufacturing jobs started long before there were any EPA regulations to speak of.