Free Trade: Fight It, or Embrace It

[Daseal]

This is a sticky situation and it's such a delicate and intricate situation you really can't tell what would happen. Yes, China has made mistakes with the lead paint, etc. However, we are so far in debt to China they could call in their debt and wreck us. China has more or less paid for the war in Iraq, they've been buying up our debt by the shit ton. So taking our business away from China could yield terrible results too.

I definitely feel for the laborers. I've done manual labor for a while. From when I finished high school for a few years and now I work summers doing manual labor. I don't think the doom and gloom is quite there. While many of the large companies will pack up, there will be small businesses that it's not worth to leave the country due to initial costs, importing, shipping time, etc.

I really do hate the environmental standards in many of these foreign countries. Honestly, I'm not very happy with the united states precautions. I recently read an article about the Ganges river in India and the extent of it's pollution is disgusting. Some of it is from poor sanitation (dumping human waste from cities into a river is a bad idea), but a lot of it is from toxic chemicals.

For the sake of America's economy, it's necessary to outsource. As people have mentioned, the price of American labor would shoot the price of products up by a ton and I doubt wages would follow that. I feel like a lot of the manual labor that can leave, more or less has. Lots of manual labor will still be needed within the US. I see us going outside the country a lot more for software development and help desk (even more than now) as we go forward.