[Rashputin]

NAFTA made it possible for industries to avoid all the things you mention by moving overseas instead of putting their heavy lobbying money behind fighting them. It's a lot easier to just buy a few more votes for another "free trade" bill than to fight an entrenched bureaucracy and those who are inclined to fight such bureaucracies aren't inclined to support the liberal secular agenda the wealthy heads of industry love so much.

All that crap you list would have never gotten as bad as it has become if industry didn't have the option to move offshore.

[wayoverontheright]

You make some good points, and then you say this:

All that crap you list would have never gotten as bad as it has become if industry didn't have the option to move offshore.

Am I to understand your solution would be to legally bar American industry from manufacturing anywhere else in the world for re-import to the American market? Wouldn't it follow that no imported goods at all should be allowed, by edict, in addition?

Contrary to your premise, one of the few things preventing further punitive regulations and industrial exodus is the fact that corporations now have this right. The decision to move is usually move or die, and the jobs would be reduced, if not lost altogether, anyway, unless imported goods were also banned.

The consumer is always ignored, forgotten completely in these discussions. Walmart has done more good for the country's poor than all the liberal anti-poverty programs combined. Walmart would have to go, with your plan, no?