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

@Pvwebb: Thanks very much for clarifying the debate. While it has been clarified that the US won't directly regulate countries, my objections still remain as to the general enforceability. Many of these countries do have various environmental or safety laws, but these aren't enforced because the owner's of the company use political connections or bribes to escape being held accountable or because disregard for the law is so rampart that there simply isn't the resources to enforce the law. US companies will still be outcompeted by countries that do adopt the desired regulations, but don't enforce them. The proposed tariffs would be extremely harmful to developing countries because any country that has a tariff applied to it would immediately lose a large proportion of its market. This would lead to large numbers of job losses. Because developing or third world countries generally lack social safety nets, this would subject many people to homelessness, starvation and a lack of healthcare. It would also take funds away from these countries that are vital for development. I believe that most countries will have these tariffs enforced against them because there is an extremely large body of law related to the environment and employment practises. Reforming law is an extremely long process and so countries that don't already have such a legal framework in place won't be able to adopt it quickly. Further, it will take a rather significant amount of time to review the new laws adopted and to determine that the country has now adopted sufficient protections. As soon as a country has tariffs applied against it, the harm will be done. Businesses will pack up shop and move countries. Planned developments will be cancelled. Even if the country meets the standard and the tariff is removed, the country's economy would have suffered a significant set back. The old Mercantile view that the balance of trade is what makes a nation prosperous has largely been discredited. The theories of absolute and comparative advantage show that we should expect international trade to result in greater economic efficiency and greater prosperity for both countries. In particular, in the case of the US, most trade occurs in US dollars. Since the deficit occurs in US dollars, as opposed to another country's currency, if there was a need to reduce the outstanding debt, the US could engage in quantitative easing to (moderately) increase inflation and hence devalue any outstanding debts. Income tax has an inherent advantage over sales tax in that it is progressive. This is good because those with more money can better afford to pay tax (with the basics taking up a lower share of their income), than those who earn less money. @Pvwebb - how will it be determined which food and which clothing does not have a sales tax applied? I would also like to note that housing, utilities, education (such a college) and transportation take up a significant proportion of income - will the sales tax apply to these? If it does, then it will put a significant burden on the poor, if it doesn't, then whatever is being taxed will be being taxed very heavily. I'd also like to question @Pvwebb about what they would suggest that the state's do in regard to tax? Would they keep a sales tax? In this case, a double sales taxes would result in a percentage that was ridiculously high? Or would he suggest that the states move to an income tax instead, in which case we still have an income tax and a sales tax and nothing has actually changed. "The wealthy are too few to fund income tax significantly. With the current trend, individual income tax could become more of a liability than an asset." - 47 percent of federal income comes from income taxes (http://www.cbpp.org...) and 34% from payroll taxes. This demolishes the claim that you made. Perhaps you should clarify - are you talking about eliminating income taxes and payroll taxes or just income taxes?