OK...you say "This does indeed impose costs on the American consumer. No doubt about it. They have to pay $3 for a pair of socks they currently pay $1 for. That $2 difference can be bandied about as a 200% increase, by those who would oppose the idea, but this is not something that would hit the entire economy. This is something that would particularly hit consumer goods, and that 200% does not slide all the way up the scale."
How much though? Does a DVD player go from $40 to $475? Or $40 to $60? If you think about the plethora of goods manufactured overseas in cheap markets, the average consumer could easily spend TWICE as much as they do now buying things, or just not buy them. Either way, decreasing consumer spending to a point that could cause a large depression.
How much did the last American-made televisions cost vis-a-vis their foreign competition, before the Americans went out of that business a few years ago?
Suppose a DVD player does cost $475. How many do people need?
Remember, the choice is not between having what we have now or having less. It's between having massive job insecurity and gradually being redduced in wages and protections, down to third world levels, or spending more and preserving the protections we have.
To compete with Chinese goods, we have to abandon social security, unemployment insurance, child labor laws, OSHA, and just go straight for serfdom. Otherwise, they win, because slaves are the cheapest possible labor, and the slaves aren't going to be agitating for greater rights, bringing up their costs. We will either proptect ourselves, by accepting the higher costs, or we will race with them to the Asian labor market bottom.
In America, we will either close the border, or there will be no work for unskilled and semi-skilled American labor, because no comparable American can compete with an unprotected Mexican. The Mexican works just as hard, and costs half as much.
There is no job in America - none except political jobs and government jobs - that are not just like the plight of the American laborer trying to compete with the Mexican laborer, or the American textile worker trying to compete with the Chinese slave. Europe, at least, has protected itself sufficiently that it still HAS a large domestic manufacturing sector. In America, to save a buck, we ship the jobs offshore, and give the American company a tax deduction for the cost of foreign labor!
YOU are paying, out of YOUR taxes (YOU dont'get the tax deduction), for your employer to ship YOUR job to the equally qualified, hungrier and cheaper foreigner who will eventually drive down your wages and drive you out of a job completely. Even doctors - skilled labor - are not safe. Legal jobs are being offshored to India.
Be government, be a capitalist, or be a service-sector guy with little protection.
Pay $475 for the DVD player and accept the economic constriction in the short term in order to preserve the American manufacturing base and security of employ in the longer term.