15% Tariff

"America IS losing an alarming rate of jobs due to cheaper labor elsewhere. A large portion of these are in manufacturing." No, we are not. That is a complete fiction. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing, but the vast majority (97%) is because of technological advancements, rather than free trade. [1] That's why even though manufacturing jobs have been disappearing over the past few decades, manufacturing output has continued to increase. [2] [1] http://www.cato.org... [2] Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, and U.S. Census Bureau, "Current Industrial Reports," http://www.census.gov... "American companies that build factories overseas in order to capture foreign markets would be unaffected by a tariff since they would build and sell in the same country. So I fail to see how they are relevant to this debate." The relevance is that these jobs are the jobs protectionists are claiming were 'outsourced.' "It is a bad thing because we are losing jobs. It is a very, very bad thing because U.S. manufacturing has a much wider impact than just on economics. During the American Revolution America had a very hard time getting the necessary amounts of weapons, powder, and shot; not to mention clothes because there wasn't a very strong textile industry in America. America had been a colony of Great Britain. America shipped her unfinished goods to the mother country and Great Britain sold them back to us as finished products. If we lose our manufacturing sector, we are delegating ourselves to being a "colony of the world." More examples of this include the Civil War. The South was an agrarian society and the North was a manufacturing society. It was for this reason that the South lost. Also, when the Japanese hit us at Pearl Harbor their navy and air force were far superior to ours. If it hadn't been for our massive manufacturing sector America would not have been able to recover to win the war. It was because of our manufacturing that the Japanese worried about 'awakening the sleeping giant.'" Again, we are not losing jobs (on the net) because of trade. That is a myth and nearly every economist in the world would agree with me. The ones from your AFL-CIO link are a small minority. It's like finding a few biologists that believe in creationism. As for national defense- I find it interesting that you use the example of America and Great Britain before the American Revolution as an example of why free trade is bad. There was no free trade, it was mercantilism. The U.S. didn't have a manufacturing sector because Britain forced them not to. Besides, as I said before, our manufacturing sector is not declining. The amount of manufacturing jobs is declining, but our manufacturing output is increasing. Even if manufacturing output was declining, we still build our weapons here, and there's no reason to think we will outsource that industry, as the U.S. is the best manufacturer of high-tech weaponry. "The link I provided also shows that many 'white collar' jobs are going overseas as well. If a factory is overseas then it only makes sense that the management and other administrative jobs necessary to run the plant would go with it." And the irrelevant quote from earlier shows that U.S. companies rarely send factories overseas. "First of all, many of these 'lower and middle class families' that you speak of are the ones that are losing jobs to begin with. I think that they would rather have their jobs and pay slightly higher prices for some basic goods, instead of losing their jobs and seeing prices go lower. A tariff would help keep their jobs here." Again, free trade has never, ever, been shown to decrease the net amount of jobs. Those families are not trading jobs for lower prices. Free trade brings both higher paying jobs and lower prices. Arguing that free trade destroys jobs is like arguing that technology destroys jobs. Both are technically true, but miss the big picture. Both destroy some jobs, but also create just as many. One, free trade increases exports because of lower tariffs in other countries. Two, the lower prices caused by trade create jobs. If a consumer spends less on consumer goods because of competition from abroad, they have more to spend on other things. If businesses can spend less on raw materials because of trade, they can produce more. "Imported food causes deaths" A tariff would not solve this problem. Your proposed tariff would result in Americans buying somewhat less imported foods and somewhat more American grown foods. That doesn't solve the problem. The obvious solution seems to be to check food for such poisons. "Thanks, but I'll take my $100 annual tax." And I'm not trying to stop you. I think you should be able to buy food from whomever you want. My problem is that you are forcing your choice on every American. In addition, that $100 is under the current law, not your proposed system. Under your 15% tariff, the amount stolen from hardworking American families and given to a few farmers would be quite a bit more. "Just because there is a tariff does not mean that competition has to decrease." Yes, it does. The entire point of a tariff is to decrease competition. If a tariffs did not decrease competition, corporations wouldn't lobby for them. "So what? If our companies wish to compete for other countries' markets they could build plants in other countries as well" Well, for one, perhaps those companies don't have the resources required to do something like that. Two, it's an indisputable fact that retaliatory tariffs hurt people who work in export industries. How can you justify protecting some workers' jobs by sacrificing other workers' jobs? "And since jobs would be returning due to the tariff, there would be more buyers than ever before, and prices could not be that high because, as I've shown, tariffs do not automatically mean no competition." No, they are not. There is absolutely no evidence that that is true. And I never said that tariffs automatically mean no competition, nor does anyone else. They mean less competition. That's the entire point of a tariff, to protect a few special interests from competition. "Also, it has been historically proved in this country time and again that prices and wages are a cycle. When one goes up, the other is soon to follow. (consider minimum wage as an example)" This is completely ridiculous, and definitely is not "historically proved." You have provided no argument to support this claim, and it is contradicted by the evidence. Take the 19th century for example. The dollar bought about twice as much in 1900 as it bought in 1800, but wages went up exponentially. Free trade causes both lowered prices and higher wages, as I explained earlier. As for the minimum wage, that's an entirely different debate. Note: I recommend Mad About Trade by Daniel Griswold for a quick explanation of how free trade benefits America; In Defense of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg for how free trade benefits 3rd world countries, and any paper by any well-respected economist has written about trade for a more technical, in depth analysis of the benefits of free trade.