[taxcontrol]

A welder in China makes between $300 to $500 per month compared to $2500 to $3000 for a US welder. This is just an example of one person and one skill required for a product. Multiply this by the dozens of skills (plus IT and management overhead) needed for one durable good product.

Then factor this against thin profit margins which are often less than 6% (http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html). It does not take much of a cost differential to equal a price differential.

[central_va]

You have to look at the total cost of labor per unit. In the USA it averages 7%. So the cost of any "widget" would still be $.93 even if slave free labor was used. But labor isn't totally free in the third world and then there are added shipping costs. "Slave" labor is still about 3% of the finished unit price. So the unit cost of the imported "widget" is $.97 A net savings of a whopping 4 cents on the dollar on a perhaps lower quality item.

I hope you can grasp that.