HH: People like what Ibksig posts not so much because they agree with him (he tends to write in a fairly dry, unimpassioned manner, after all), but because what he writes makes sense.
What you keep proposing is a form of mercantilism, which has been tried before and failed miserably. The whole problem for the developed West right now is that the world has changed/is changing back to its natural equilibrium. Asia is a massive landmass with a massive population, and for all but the past couple of hundred years of history, has been both wealthier and more productive than the West. For the past couple of centuries, however, there were fewer than one billion people in developed countries (mostly in the West) and everyone else in highly undeveloped countries that only ever produced raw materials and weren’t really part of the world market (either as consumers or producers) of finished products. This was because Asia was essentially beaten down under colonialism, and then beat itself down further under ridiculous forms of government or economic models. Now, the pool of people who have the ability to produce and consume finished products has dramatically increased, to perhaps twice what it was, as China, India and others have started to come on line and give up their ridiculous economic and/or political systems. Of course doubling the pool of people able to manufacture (as opposed to merely grow stuff) will exert downward pressure on both manufacturing costs and wages, especially since the new additions to the pool are so far behind.
So let’s say the U.S. government takes your line though, and basically changes this economic relationship with Asia. Who does it export to? Itself? That’s like a dog chasing its tail. Europe? Why would Europe buy from the U.S. though when it can buy more cheaply from Asia? Then another interesting question is what is Europe doing to prevent losing its market share to Asia? I’m sure Europe is losing some manufacturing to Asia, and I’m sure they also have certain tarriffs and so on in place, but I’m sure many European nations have already realised they can’t prevent the rise of China and India (and rightly so – doesn’t it seem insanely naive to think that one third of the planet’s population, especially since they live in two ancient cultures that were once far more advanced than the West, would remain useless forever?), so instead, they’ve been working on their education systems so they can work at the high end where China and India can’t compete with them yet (and by the time China and India get to the point where Finland, for example, is now, Finland will be on the new cutting edge). The problem is that America is obviously not working at this high end enough or the loss of low end manufacturing jobs wouldn’t be such an issue for Americans. America needs to get smarter about this and compete with other developed nations for high end jobs, not developing nations for low end jobs as though everyone is caught in a time warp and this is still the 1950s.
I mean, come on, is this rocket science?