Recently American companies trying to build plants in other countries have had to sign agreements on intellectual property while trying to operate manufacturing facilities in other countries. Some countries require that a foreign business operation in their company must sign agreements which allow access to proprietary information of that company. There has even been at least one case of theft of intellectual property of an American company doing business overseas.
So the cost of doing business overseas can be very high, not to mention the loss of our technical data and any edge we might have in competition for business.
I really don't like the fact that American companies are building products overseas that will be exported back to our shores and kill the same businesses here that cannot compete with the cheap labor. Examples are clothes, shoes, and other basic consumer items. Now if a product built by an American company overseas is sold overseas, such as automobiles for example, that is fine.
As part of a solution to our economic problems right now I believe that imports to America should be very limited mainly to things like certain metals or resources that we cannot produce in the US. Other imports like clothes, shoes, food, consumer electronics, tools, automobiles, and many other commodities that are imported should be strictly limited or even banned so that manufacturers in the US can start producing such items and hire more workers to do so. I know all the free-traders will scream about this if we tried to do it, but I don't think we can continue to let our own manufacturing industries die out while we import cheap goods made with cheap labor overseas. Our workers lose jobs and we lose our technical abilities and our manufacturing know-how advantage. It will eventually lead to the decline of America as a world power.
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