[harryh]

It's all the same though.

In the vast majority of circumstances you aren't firing an individual American and hiring an individual from China. You're just choosing to buy something from a giant corporation that manufactures goods in China instead of a competing giant corporation that manufactures goods in the US. Switching cell phone providers is just like switching from American Giant (made in America) to some other purveyor of sweaters that manufactures overseas.

Are you saying that you think you have a moral obligation to buy things made by American workers, who are universally wealthier and have access to a much stronger social safety net, than Chinese workers?

If anything it seems like it would be the opposite to me.

[methodover]

This discussion and the original post has been what the United States government’s trade policy ought to be, not the morality of an individual’s purchasing choice (say, to buy a Chinese-made sweater or a US-made one). I think the question you’ve asked is interesting, but I don’t see how it’s pertinent to the matter at hand.

[harryh]

It's pertinent to the matter at hand because trade policy is about enforcing this sort of morality at a large scale. If it is, in fact, immoral to buy goods from China then we can enforce that through trade policy that restricts free trade.

But if it's not, then we shouldn't restrict free trade.