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

@Pvwebb: You have not provided the exact question that you wish to debate, so I would suggest that we use the following two motions: 1) The US should regulate the practises of companies that are allowed to import (environmental, safety, employment, ect.) 2) The US should implement a federal sales tax (instead of any state sales taxes) that affect all products equally. I'll further note that you haven't disclosed the extent of regulation that you would like to see happen. So for now I will argue against the idea of all extending all US environmental, safety and employment practises to companies that would like to import. ------ Dear readers, the affirmative's proposal to regulate foreign companies is both grossly impractical and extremely harmful. It is a proposal prove impossible to enforce, raise costs for American consumers and harm developing countries. This proposal will be impossible to enforce because the US does not have legal jurisdiction in foreign countries. It can't raid companies accused of violations - only ask permission to visit - so these companies will have time to cover up evidence of wrong doing and destroy any incriminating documents. It can't compel people to testify, so most workers will refuse to provide any evidence so that they can avoid being fired in retaliation. Even if a company agreed to allow inspections, the US couldn't afford to send an inspector over there as it would be prohibitively expensive. Because of these factors, the US won't be able to obtain the evidence it needs to detect and prove violations of these laws. Without a chance of being caught, foreign companies have no incentive to follow the laws and are likely to violate them whenever it would increase their profit. Secondly, it will raise the costs for American consumers because many of these companies will simply choose to export to countries other than the US, rather than to go through the cost and complexity of complying with all of these regulations. These regulations are extremely complex and complying with two sets of regulations (US and their own country's) would be extremely expensive. But further, a lack of lawyers trained in US law and who speak the local language means that many of the companies wouldn't be able to comply with US law even if they wanted to. These companies will be banned from exporting to the US and so US consumers will have to pay more for their goods. The affirmative may argue that less imports will be good for American businesses. Perhaps there is some marginal benefit here, but for each new jobs created, thousands of American consumers will be paying more for their goods. If we look at this from a utilitarian perspective, we can see that this simply isn't worth it. Thirdly, this will harm developing countries. While the US needs more businesses to create more jobs and increase taxable income, third world countries require these much, much more. These countries don't have unemployment benefits, don't have the mass of charities available in the US and don't have Medicaid. Without these programs people starve or suffer from debilitating illnesses that could easily be cured if they had a job and could afford medical treatment or if their government had more money to spend on hospitals. These people need the jobs and money much more than we do. Further, a federal sales tax is a bad idea because it actually reduces competitiveness. The diversity of laws is one of the main strengths of the US - if one state sets its sales tax too high it doesn't damage the economy too much because they can always move to another state that is more reasonable. Secondly, the federal government already gets enough money and wastes it. The US national debt is already, $16,787,451,118,147 and that's with extremely limited unemployment benefits (compared to Europe and Australia), a poor medical system and one of the most expensive university systems in the world. If the federal government administered the sales tax then the next time there is a budget crisis, they would be tempted to start siphoning off money from the sales tax instead of passing it on to the states.