It's always interesting how even freepers can cling to emotional positions at all costs. We tend to forget that there've been good Democrats and bad Republicans, and it's policy not politics that matters.
In the economy it's services --not manufacturing that matters. Services account for 60 percent of the GDP, 75 percent of employment, and 90 percent of all new jobs. Sure, we all miss the loss of our smokestack factories but those lifestyles went the way of the old agricultural and 'hunting-and-gathering' patterns of less advanced societies.
This is an emotional issue - and when people get upset they call for big government to bail them out with high import taxes so as to redistribute our hard earned wealth to those unwilling to compete in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, all those service jobs which have become the backbone of our economy depend totally on physical objects, which are manufactured somewhere. It would be better if that somewhere were here.
Wouldn't our current balance of trade deficit with China, India, Mexico, everyone, qualify as the redistribution of our American wealth to those people? Personally, if wealth is to be redistributed (and it must be if there is to be an economy), I would rather see it redistributed to other Americans who will eventually, again, redistribute it to still other Americans than have it sent to foreign countries who will probably never send it back here to the American worker. The American worker: You know, the one that gave the money value in the first place.