oxiclean said:
why not give companies tax incentives to keep manufacturing in the US? all that raising import taxes would do is hurt the consumers.
Not really. Companies will have a huge tax incentive to make the same things on US soil if we put a huge tax on importing items. Consumers still get the same second-rate crap they always got, from the same companies they got them from, but now they're built in the US instead of in China so if it blows up in their face again there's actually someone to sue.
Hell 90% of the cars you see on the road were built here in America. Don't get too confused because it's a Japanese company.
We wouldn't tax the hell out of a foreign company if they decided to set up manufacturing here in the US, and we would tax the hell out of Ford if they decided to start manufacturing Mustangs in Japan for some reason.
There would be one notable exception, though. Oil. And that's only because we can't produce enough of it in our own country to sustain ourselves at any price, let alone a nice comfy price. American wells are just too dry to produce enough oil for us. Though the wells we do have operating could be given serious incentives to sell the oil here in the US...