[ceejayoz]

We grow corn in Kansas and not NYC's Central Park. (Roughly) the same regulatory regime; very different costs of living and available workforces.

[lliamander]

Yes, there will still be specialization and trade in a balanced regulatory environment.

[ceejayoz]

Precisely.

As such, Americans don't make many of their own clothes.

[lliamander]

No.

We don't make our own clothes because:

1. The regulatory burden on manufacturing is much higher here than foreign countries

2. Those foreign countries have a deliberate policy of maintaining a trade surplus in order to improve their own industrial capacity at the expense of our own

I would absolutely expect that even in a more level trade environment there would still be some foreign manufacturing of clothes. But what we are seeing is not the happy accident of the free market, but the result of very deliberate government policy.

[ceejayoz]

You've left out:

3. American workers have more productive uses of their time.

[lliamander]

No, I did not. Are you actually going to engage with the arguments I have made?

[ceejayoz]

You've not made any, just assertions.