Trump just fought China with tariffs. That is not the answer and I don't think is one of the "obvious solutions" referenced. Let me put it this way...
Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff? Is it ok to have a 5% mortality rate at a factory in Alabama if they pay a 60% tariff? Should U.S. companies be allowed to just pay fees to become exempt from FDA/EPA/OSHA/etc. rules?
I know some will argue that it is the case in the U.S. A mining company can break the rules, kill a dozen workers, then pay a million dollar fine and go back to business as usual.
But we don't investigate, we don't fine, we don't punish in any way foreign companies that don't follow U.S. environment/labor/safety rules. We open the door and put their products on the shelf right next to U.S. products. The answer is not to levy a tariff to make them price-neutral. The answer is to ban them just like we should ban U.S.-made products that don't follow the rules.
If a company can pass inspection and certify that they meet U.S. rules the same as U.S. manufacturers, and still have a price advantage, I say let them clobber U.S. competition. But the U.S. company gets regulator inspections as part of their taxes. Foreign companies have to pay for U.S.-recognized inspectors on their own dime.
Same thing for U.S. soy farmers selling into China or Norway. They should have to meet the standards of those countries and pay for the inspections that prove it.
Should smaller countries just close their borders if they don't have a large enough economy to support compliance with ~200 other countries requirements?
Even now I know factories that only export to the EU, or only ship to America because supporting 2 sets of complex regulatory compliance requirements isn't manageable given their team size.
> Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff?
There are problems that tariffs are a solution to, like currency manipulation. Lack of environmental rules is not really one of those problems.
> The answer is to ban them just like we should ban U.S.-made products that don't follow the rules.
The real problem is that there are two problems, which currently sort of cancel out.
The first problem is that the existing rules in the US are effective but prohibitively burdensome. The second problem is that the same rules don't apply to China. Businesses solve the first problem by invoking the second.
We can't solve just one. If you imposed the existing rules on China, things would become unreasonably expensive. If you stopped imposing them on the US, there would be as much pollution in the US as there is in China. We need more efficient rules. Which is hard. Worse, it's not sexy and nobody wants to do the work.
But in a sense we can have one solve the other in the opposite direction too. Apply the same rules to other countries and they can't be avoided by leaving the US, which then creates pressure to fix the rules so that they're not prohibitively inefficient, since they can no longer be avoided.
> If you imposed the existing rules on China, things would become unreasonably expensive.
For a time, yes. But the large market reachable by meeting those requirements would lead to innovation in trying to meet those requirements. (Or in trying to cheat those requirements, which would require some care to enforce.)
They can also be enforced via a ratchet upwards, so that there's time to adapt.
> Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff? Is it ok to have a 5% mortality rate at a factory in Alabama if they pay a 60% tariff? Should U.S. companies be allowed to just pay fees to become exempt from FDA/EPA/OSHA/etc. rules?
People keep talking about environmental regulation, but I'd say that they alone do not account even for a few percents of all problems hampering US manufacturing.
Same is for labour rates, US labour rates in non-flyover states are already lower than in South China...
Seeing people keep talking about that, and fail to see way bigger elephants in the room.
Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff? Is it ok to have a 5% mortality rate at a factory in Alabama if they pay a 60% tariff? Should U.S. companies be allowed to just pay fees to become exempt from FDA/EPA/OSHA/etc. rules?
I know some will argue that it is the case in the U.S. A mining company can break the rules, kill a dozen workers, then pay a million dollar fine and go back to business as usual.
But we don't investigate, we don't fine, we don't punish in any way foreign companies that don't follow U.S. environment/labor/safety rules. We open the door and put their products on the shelf right next to U.S. products. The answer is not to levy a tariff to make them price-neutral. The answer is to ban them just like we should ban U.S.-made products that don't follow the rules.
If a company can pass inspection and certify that they meet U.S. rules the same as U.S. manufacturers, and still have a price advantage, I say let them clobber U.S. competition. But the U.S. company gets regulator inspections as part of their taxes. Foreign companies have to pay for U.S.-recognized inspectors on their own dime.
Same thing for U.S. soy farmers selling into China or Norway. They should have to meet the standards of those countries and pay for the inspections that prove it.