[pfannkuchen]

Perhaps the most significant problem with maintaining free trade with places outside of Europe is that the lax environmental and labor regulations in those places make it extremely hard to compete.

If one factory has to operate clean and one doesn’t, who is going to make the cheaper product? If one factory has access to borderline slave labor and one doesn’t, who is etc.

Putting aside competition and focusing on morality, I don’t really understand how people put their head in the sand about the environmental and human damage they support abroad that they would never tolerate at home. The air we breathe is the same air that factories anywhere in the world pollute into, and people in Asia are just as human as we are.

I think a good approach would be to apply tariffs that offset the cost of environmental and labor regulations in America, which would be removed if the foreign countries adopt equivalent regulations and prove that they are in compliances. The state of affairs we have had for many decades now is insanity.

[hakfoo]

Competition still works as long as you've got something other than "cheapest" to differentiate yourself on.

The people who say "I'm buying brand X because they have a reputation for quality/good design/better total experience" can help finance any difference in labour and environmental remediation costs.

You can't win a "I want the cheapest generic 330-ohm resistor" market wither higher cost structures, but you can come up with a lot of ways to avoid having to enter that market.