Taxes would have to rise to punitive levels in order to compensate for the disparity between the expense of hiring an American skilled laborer instead of a skilled Chinese laborer.

Such a tax would have a few consequences, such as corporations that use foreign labor simply moving their HQ’s to the Cayman Islands.

As The Economist put it (back during the primaries when they still supported free trade), John Edwards’s solution to the problem of little girls whose families can’t afford winter coats is to raise taxes on companies that make and sell cheap winter coats.

Furthermore, there is no need for an auto factory worker that has closed down in Michigan to receive vocational education for a new career. He can just move to a state whose governments policies don’t punish auto makers and do the same job as before.

Also, companies that outsource don’t just increase their own profits; they decrease costs to the consumer. Trade isn’t a zero-sum game. A company’s management doesn’t think, if something sells for $15/unit and costs $10/unit to make in America or $5/unit to make in China, we can double profits if we make stuff in China. Instead they can decrease their sales prices to $10/unit and more people in the US will be able to afford it, so the company will make more money, and American money buys more.

Regarding one of the specific free trade agreements currently before the US Congress (which John McCain backed and Barack Obama opposes), that with Colombia (the others being Panama and South Korea).
Presently, Colombia has a tariff on American imports and the US congress must decide annuallty whether or not to provide Colombia with MFN status (we haven’t had a tariff on Colombian imports in years). Thus, their benefit from signing the agreement (in addition to just closer relations with the US) is that they no longer have to worry about US markets being closed to their goods in the future. The benefit to the US, however, is that US made goods will be more affordable to Colombians. Thus we will sell more there. As demand rises, US companies will be able to employee MORE workers, not less.

We shall see…

In the meantime I will bite my nails, gird my loins and guard my coins!!

I didn’t vote in this election – this has been a bad and busy year for me, personal problems, etc.

I didn’t like either McCain or Obama, but if I had voted, I would’ve voted for McCain since he was the ‘cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry hamper.’

I think Palin is more of a conservative than McCain is; I thought she was okay.

How about splitting the difference? Blame both free trade AND government (if that isn’t too contradictory for you!)

Unfettered capitalism + incompetent, greedy government

Some free trade is good, but I believe in certain limits. As in there should be a moderate foreign-labor tax. Companies that shift jobs offshore to profit from the sweat of 3rd-world laborers (read “Chinese”) should pay a tax for selling out American workers. Channel this revenue into vo-tech schools to improve the quality of the American workforce. Not a ruinous tax – enough to make the point, and fund the improvement of our domestic worker.