[ben_w]

Either the work is done in your country, where you:

* control minimum wage laws etc.,

* collect the taxes,

* benefit from most of the money being spent locally,

or it’s done abroad, where a foreign government collects all the benefits.

Import duties don’t do much to fix that. And if you have most or all of the workforce, then you get to lobby against other nations’ import duties.

[arcseco]

You don't really get to control min-wage laws, working standards or environmental regulations over the long term in a tariff free world. US trade deficits are growing and will inevitably have to be normalized. When that happens the US will have to become a lot more competitive with nations that don't have these standards in place. Stagnated wages are just the beginning and are borrowing time before labour standards and environmental standards are forced to equalize with the East.

[tomatotomato37]

This is why we need to start including a tariff with labor or environmental regulations. The point of those regulations is that we as a nation are accepting a decrease in economic efficiency for a (hopeful) net gain in general quality of life; if companies are allowed to just offshore their shit to some place that doesn't care without compensating in some other way than you're stuck the economic disadvantage without the accompanying benefit.