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

For this topic we"re addressing federal income tax not federal payroll tax. State taxes aren"t addressed. To address federal payroll tax we would need to address how to ensure people have adequate retirement support and medical coverage, as well as address unemployment insurance. But, payroll tax does bring up another important statistic because is a regressive tax as in the web site you mentioned (http://www.cbpp.org...). Note what this means when looking at the graph, "Sources of Federal Tax Revenue,* 1945-2013," also on that site. Note the increasing trend in the percentage of payroll tax in the total federal tax revenue from 1952 until 1995. At the same time, consider that people paying Social Security and Medicare taxes are also paying individual income taxes. Individual income taxes percentage during this period had a flat trend during this period while corporate income taxes percentage had a decreasing trend. Payroll tax is a reflection of who is paying individual income taxes. The increase in the percentage of payroll tax versus the decrease in the percentage of corporate income tax shows that income taxes have in actual practice become less progressive than designed. While inflation caused the monetary numbers of individual income to go up during the period, the actual value of the average income of those paying individual income has actually gone down during this period. Manufacturing jobs are the mainstay of the US economy and exports (http://manufacturing.gov...). This decline in income from 1952 to 1995 corresponds to a loss in manufacturing jobs. "Manufacturers in the United States are the most productive in the world, far surpassing the worker productivity of any other major manufacturing economy, leading to higher wages and living standards." (http://www.nam.org...) The percentage of US jobs in manufacturing declined from about 28% in 1962 to 9% in 2011. (http://manufacturing.gov...) "The United States lost 6 million manufacturing jobs between early 2001 and late 2009. And despite small gains during the last two years [2010 and 2011], the trend in manufacturing employment for the last 30 years has been downward." (http://money.cnn.com...) Particularly disturbing with the downward trend is the loss in higher paying technical design and engineering jobs (http://www.computerworld.com..., http://www.todaysengineer.org..., http://www.infoworld.com..., http://www.usnews.com...), the middle and upper-middle income jobs, that are significant contributors to individual income tax. In our present recovery, the gains are for the rich. (http://www.economist.com...) Essentially the corporations and their executives who have outsourced their manufacturing have made great gains in the recovery. But, the people who previously worked in manufacturing jobs are not economically recovering. The outsourcing of manufacturing by US corporations has redistributed wealth among nations. In 2000 the US produced three times the manufacturing in China, but now China"s GNP exceeds the US. (http://www.marketwatch.com... ) However, as seen in the previous paragraph, the distribution of wealth among people has become worse, with rich getting richer and middle class decreasing and poor increasing. At the same time, pollution and product safety has become an increasing issue in China. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com..., http://www.greenpeace.org...) Tariff penalties on imports are different from tariffs. They aren"t an across the board tax like income tax or sales tax. They are more like a traffic ticket, and the penalties specific to maintain competitiveness. Penalties would be on a case by case basis just as is currently done when there is a non-competitive practice complaint against importers now. Just as with non-competitive practice cases, penalties for lack of regulation compared to US regulations would only be applied when it severely affected US manufacturing"s ability to compete. Just as traffic tickets encourages drivers to keep traffic laws, the threat of a tariff penalty would encourage importing manufacturer to follow US regulations. It is unlikely that a small foreign company independent of any US company would be considered a competitive threat. The bulk of the importers with this issue are tied to large US or international corporations. They have large legal staffs. The real issue is who will represent the US manufacturing workers who work for the same corporation that imports products and defends the importer. This is the most likely scenario. This might take a chartering an organization such as the EEOC. While enacting penalties might be rare, the publicity of the hearings would have an effect on corporate practices. A prime example is Apple and FoxConn. (http://en.wikipedia.org..., http://www.forbes.com...) Sales tax can be either regressive or progressive. The way federal sales tax was implemented in the 1960"s was progressive. It was a 20% sales tax on only luxury items such as jewelry. While we don"t want sales tax to be as complicated for the average citizen as income tax, it can be progressive by exempting necessity items such as food, clothing, and medicine. Income tax essentially taxes US industry as opposed to imported manufacturing; thus, making it harder for US manufacturing to compete. Even corporate income tax encourages corporations to move their headquarters overseas, an issue President Obama touched on in his recent news conference. What other ways to do you have to address the problem of loss in manufacturing jobs in the US and its effect on the economy? I"m open to other options, but think we need to use all the good options we have available.