[Mick2000]

Agreed, but then I think it becomes a matter of removing the disparity in our costs of labor, primarily between our country and India and China. With India, we have to bring down their tariffs (second highest in the world) and with China, I'm pretty sure there are tariffs to contend with as well as the primary driver which is that the yuan is pegged to our dollar at a 8.3 to 1 ratio making their costs 8 times as cheap as ours.

We need (and the Bush Administration is currently working on this but it's an uphill battle) to get that disparity to be lessened significantly over the next couple years so that the playing field will even out more.

[Tokhtamish]

China is a mercantilist state so no amount of jawboning is going to cause them to lower their tariffs. This isn't about money. This is about creating the technological base with which they can engage the US in an arms race a generation from now and win. To lay the economic groundwork to succeed where the Soviet Union failed.

Equalizing the American standard of living downwards is something Americans flatly will not accept.

[Doe Eyes]

the primary driver which is that the yuan is pegged to our dollar at a 8.3 to 1 ratio making their costs 8 times as cheap as ours.

The Japanese Yen trades at over 110 yen to the dollar, so their costs are 110 times less than ours. How can we compete with these cheap currencies?