Tarrif penalty on imports not manufactured to U.S regulations for polution, safety, child labor, etc

Cause of US manufacturing decline* The article you referenced in round 4 on the US semiconductor industry (http://www.semi.org...) is a short sighted view of the ups and downs in the industry on June 4, 2013. A quote from an article on September 23, 2013: "The prediction is even more bleak than the company forecast in June, which estimated sales of $35.8 billion for the year, a 5.5 percent drop." (http://news.thomasnet.com...) A highly disputed statement in the article you referenced is "We desperately need to see the passage of immigration reform, especially high-skilled immigration reform to allow more H1-B visas and green cards for those in the STEM fields." (http://www.semi.org...) The dispute is whether three is a shortage in engineers, not the immigration reform (http://www.businessweek.com...). On July 25, 2014 the Census Bureau reported, "The semiconductor and related device manufacturing industry employed 90,244 people in 2012, down 38.3 percent from 146,152 employed in 2007." (http://www.census.gov...) The reason China continues to have a low per capita income is an issue with their competitiveness. China has been artificially keeping per capita income low by using a fixed exchange rate between the yuan and US dollar. This kept Chinese goods low and the US deficit with China huge. US Treasury Secretaries have been working with China to loosen the fixed rate between the yuan and US dollar. (http://useconomy.about.com...) An example of a nation industrializing is Japan. In the 1950"s and 1960"s Japanese labor was considered cheap. By the 1980"s Japanese product were considered high quality and caused US companies to increase their quality. By the 1990"s Japanese labor was more expensive than US labor. South Korea has followed a similar industrial path to Japan. China has been industrializing for several decades now, but they have seen little increase in their per capita income because of artificially keep the yuan low compared to the US dollar. In this article on November 4, 2014 (http://blogs.wsj.com...) the US trade deficit continues to reach historic highs with 80% of the trade deficit to China. A quote from this article: "Although the U.S. Treasury Department has praised China"s gradual appreciation of the yuan in recent years, it said last month that the currency still remains "significantly undervalued." Beijing"s currency intervention in the last year raised questions about the government"s commitment to move toward a fully market-determined exchange rate." A $3 billion surge in buying of cell phones accounts for most of the $5 billion increase in imports. (previous link) Note that cell phone CPU"s are what caused an increase in semiconductor production in the US, but the resulting exports and imports left the US with a huge deficit. The information technology industry in the US isn"t a big issue related to this discussion right now. The only related issue is companies complaining that they need more immigration to fill jobs in this industry. The only basis for this complaint is to drive wages and salaries down. Salaries of programmers in India are very competitive between companies in India, and those salaries are rising. Information technology does not directly contribute to pollution. *Proper use of tariff penalties* While it is unrealistic to expect importers to match US regulations exactly, it is not unrealistic to expect importer to allow progress which moves them closer to the US regulations. It is the hindering of that progress that should be penalized. Beijing"s currency intervention to keep the yuan valued low both keeps the standard of living in China low and gives an unfair competitive advantage to manufacturing in China. If China should continue to intervene in keeping the yuan low, this causes a need for action. Care needs to be taken with this action to prevent the damaging effects of a tariff. First, an initial warning about a pending tariff penalty should take place with a deadline for China to stop intervention. The penalty should be large enough to remove the advantage of the intervention, so that the logical move is for China to stop the intervention. After intervention is stopped, the penalty changes to probation. The ideal is that the tariff is never imposed, but tariff must be a real possibility. To avoid damaging effects, the tariff needs to be changed back to probation in a reasonable amount of time after China stops intervention on the yuan. *Sales tax* As previously mentioned related to the graph, Sources of Federal Tax Revenue, 1945-2013, in the article, http://www.cbpp.org..., the increase in payroll tax and decrease in corporate income tax bring into question how federal income tax has evolved. Either federal income tax has lost its progressiveness and loopholes have increased, or the effective average standard of living for people in the US has continually dropped over this period. In any case, federal income tax as actually implemented no longer looks significantly progressive. Federal income tax software to some degree removes the need of going to a tax accountant, but it does not simply federal income tax. The questions federal income tax software asks are horrendous. The average US citizen probably doesn"t understand many of them. Federal income tax software usually takes a safe approach to ensure that the user pays all income tax that is due. Accountants and people well studied on the federal income tax system will say you may end up missing deductions using software. But, you may need a personal accountant to keep up with the paperwork and understand the tax system. Again, this favors the rich. One company"s software will give you a consistent answer. But, if you don"t get a consistent answer from different people working at the IRS, how do you know the software is right? At the very least, federal income tax should not increase, including increases due to inflation moving people to a higher tax bracket. Ideally, income tax should gradually decrease. But, any replacement in revenue for income tax or increase in revenue should be sales tax. *Conclusion* A tariff penalty should only be used to protect competition, not prop up US manufacturing that isn"t competitive. US manufacturing was able to compete with Japanese and South Korean manufacturing. With these countries, the US used tariff penalties when importers priced products below manufacturing costs to driver competition out of business. The main issue in the present economy is when China intervenes to keep the yuan low compared to the US dollar. The US should specifically consider a tariff penalty if China continues this practice with the guidelines given in the proper use of tariff section above. Because China"s actions relate to currency, it is not traditionally considered an unfair trade. However, it has severely damaged competition in other countries as well as the US. The US cannot expect other countries to have the same regulations as the US. However, the normal trend in countries as they industrialize is improved labor practices and improvements to reduce pollution. Hindering these improvements such as the case mentioned above should be subject to penalty. The US also needs the means to address companies moving manufacturing to different countries to avoid antipollution regulations.