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It seems you think we close up factory after factory here so Chinese can be employed to spark employment in our nation.

Does it seem to you that we are choosing to close US factories, Doubty? Who is we??

Factory CEOs/owners/shareholders are making those decisions, as they should.

Let me frame this in a tax-morality light. It's interesting to ask what maximum percentage the government should be allowed to take of your income: 38%? 50%? Why not 100%?

So let's ask: "How much imports should "we" be allowed? 62%? 50.000%? 0%?"

Once we get to 50%, or "ZERO" trade deficit, should "we" close the borders? Who decides what value of exported steel vs. imported textiles is a "fair" trade? The government? Or the buyers?

What boundaries should be protected? Should Rhode Island be protected from Oklahoma oil fields? Should Kansas be protected from California's semiconductor exports? Why should Mike Dell and Carly Fiorina be allowed to transfer most of America's PC development jobs to Austin and Houston? It's not fair to the Gateway folks who lost their jobs in Sioux City, South Dakota!

And then, why should cities not be protected? Should Corsicana, Texas withhold fruitcake exports to Seattle until Starbucks agrees to drop its prices for Joe?

[Enjoying more coffee this morning, thankyouverymuch!]

IMO there are two problems with the trade you seem to think is appropriate.

Number one, the US represents less than 5% of the world's populace. If the rest of the world operated on the same relative wealth status the US did, I might not object as stridently to the international trade we are persuing. But it doesn't.

We are taking a one gallon bucket full of water, attaching it to a 50 gallon barrel with a hose, and wondering why the barrel isn't impacted more, and the bucket so empty. Essentially we have deflated our bucket. The downward pressure on jobs and salaries in the US is enormous. Couple this with the pressures of illegal immigration and H1-B and other visas, salaries in the US were bound to stagnate.

I don't like unions. I think they've had a bad impact on our nation's ability to compete. On the other end of the spectrum I think it's fair to say that we've gone to the extreme in the other direction.

There are other comments I could make along these lines, but I'm sure you've heard them all before.

The second problem I see is dealing with communist states like China. Why of all nations did we choose to prop up an economicly stagnant rogue nation like that? IMO we have sponsored a state that is destabalizing the word. I can't buy into that.