They would turn what industry America still has into another piece of the welfare state. There's simply no need to compete when you have a captive market. There's a reason why the Soviet car industry wasn't the wonder of the world.
Tariffs would also give the Government the ability to choose winners and losers in the domestic marketplace, allowing them to effectively enforce unionization and the rest of their whacked-out agenda
If you hand tariff power to the Government then your most important competitive act suddenly isn't to work better, faster, cheaper - it's to lobby the Government for interventions that suit your company.
Because once you allow Government to place a foot on the hose of production, negotiating with that foot becomes more important than anything else.
Finally - tariffs breach Freedom of Association. Why would we force Americans to buy something they don't want? If a foreign car is better, faster or cheaper than a GM Volt, by what right would we interfere?
If you truly want to bring industry back to America then remove the barriers to industry in America. Capital goes where it is treated best.
Reduce Corporate taxation. Also, simplify taxation. Tax fulfillment costs have become a significant burden on smaller businesses.
Reduce the vast panoply of EPA and other environmental regulations. Companies aren't going to relocate to a country where wood stoves can be declared illegal.
Remove arbitrary, vindictive Government (we all remember Gibson's guitars, I hope).
Get rid of Obamacare. America isn't France. Companies need employees to work more than 29 hours a week, and that's only a small piece of the anti-competitive madness pouring out from Obamacare.
Well, hope this was helpful.
Like Captain Fletcher told the Red Legs. "Don't pee down my back and tell me it's raining."
Horsefeathers.
We have tried “your way” now, for nearly an entire generation.
“Your way” has nearly bankrupted America.
Bring back American industry, and enact tariffs.
Do not let the government choose targets for import tariffs. Have one flat percentage (I would say 10% would be good) and charge EVERY SINGLE THING IMPORTED INTO AMERICA exactly that much of a tariff.
10% on imported oil (no tariff on American oil)
10% on imported Chinese (or Mexican, or European) manufactured goods of any sort.
(no tariff on any American good)
10% on imported food. (no tariff on any American food)
I’m completely series. America needs to become friendly to American producers.
And American producers incidentally need to become friendly to their own country for a change.
Put Americans back to work.
Helpful and accurate.
Everyone who constantly repeats the tariff and “bring back the jobs” mantras need to start a small business somewhere making something ubiquitous that is now imported.
With so many people unemployed, many of them engineers and financial services people, it stands to reason that _some_ of them would have, by now, taken their expertise and started a domestic business. Likely, many have tried. Perhaps a few have succeeded, only to discover the huge target they now have on their backs.
About all you can do these days is buy yourself a job, either making something or providing some service that can’t be exported. But you need to have no employees, use nothing that could be classified as a chemical, be located remotely and use as little water and energy as possible in the process.