[central_va]

Countries like China produce much of what we buy and ship it here while manipulating their currency and policies to their favor. We no longer manufacture what we need to sustain ourselves, importing much more than we export, selling our assets and taking on massive debts to sustain a standard of living we can no longer afford. While our own manufacturing sector struggles, the Chinese machine continues to grow in strength and we are paying for it in the wealth of our country, our jobs and now our health.

[Paulie]

Many of us have been yelling and screaming about this (and the borders)for 15 years, only to be ignored, mocked, or shouted down.

No more.

[JPJones]

“Free Trade” means the Chinese and Mexicans get jobs, factories, training, capital and wealth...while we get houses full of obsolete and/or broken electronics.

[Alberta's Child]

I’m really curious to see what the next 12-18 months will bring here. The recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar against almost every major foreign currency will ultimately make it MORE difficult for us to compete against foreign producers.

[econjack]

Our “free trade” policies have succeeded in doing nothing more than allowing foreign countries to pick off our industries through predatory pricing, dumping and buyouts. Much of this is because as a nation we have not protected our manufacturing sector.

These are the same puerile arguments that have been made for centuries. Protective trade policies make sense with a new country trying to compete. That is not the US. Protective tariffs hide the problem; they don't fix it. The US lags because its stock of capital can't compete; it's not labor. We face the highest corporate tax rates in the world. If you want to fix the problem rather than putting lipstick on the pig, you need to let corporations invest more in their businesses and that means lower corporate tax rates and perhaps investment credits. If we had a 15% corporate tax rate, European and Pacific Rim countries would flock to build in the US, with both economic growth and higher wages as the result.

Let's fix the problem for once rather than hiding it. After all, who gets the tariff money? The very entity that did nothing to earn it: the gov't. Raising tariffs means higher prices for us, and little or no additional production or employment in the US. The only winner is the gov't, as it has more of our money to buy your votes. Think about it.

[American in Israel]

We absolutely can compete against cheap wages, but we cannot compete against the EPA. It is one thing to place tarifs on goods entering the US quite another to place mountains of Regulations and fees and fines on your own goods.

Americans out produce any country in the world due to our good work ethic and innovative methods.

But Socialistic Slavery to Bumbling Bureaucrats never works.

[OIFVeteran]

Agree completely. When I was in high school in the 80s and they were talking about how great free trade was for everyone, my first thought was how can American workers compete with workers from countries where $4.00 a week is considered a good wage? There is only one way, if our wages go down.

[gattaca]

bmp

[Organic Panic]

I am a free trader. But the USA is not a free trade country. We have a behemoth in DC that does all it can to hurt US based business.

[Brian Griffin]

This is my duty/balanced trade proposal:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3504358/posts?page=12