Equity of Trade Versus Free Trade has a huge trade imbalance with most trading nations. The imbalance is not in agriculture, although many food products -- both raw and processed -- enter the U.S. at prices below those for comparable U.S.-grown foodstuffs. To a large degree the imbalance is in manufactured goods. One reason is that many nations have lower costs of production -- based upon a lower standard of living, cheap labor, inexpensive raw materials, protective government policy, etc. Multinationals who have moved their plants to foreign locations enjoy the best of both worlds -- inexpensive manufacturing costs and unlimited access to the world's biggest consumer market, the USA.Our laissez-faire trade stance, when coupled with many nations' protective trade stances and the inherent disparity of living standards around the world, is proving to be a recipe for ever-increasing trade deficits. Exacerbating the situation, GATT and NAFTA are proving difficult to implement when other nations improvise phony trade issues and drag their feet at every opportunity. Bottomline, the U.S. is having problems with free trade.There is an alternative to free trade. It's called EQUITY OF TRADE. It would work like this:Under equity of trade, if the nation or other trading entity in question wants to export some manufactured item or food product into this country, and if the item in question is priced lower than a comparable item manufactured or grown in the U.S., then the trading entity is required to pay a tariff (import duty) at the Port of Entry that equals the difference between the landed-price of the good and the average cost of a comparable American-made good. Example: A shirt made in Sri Lanka lands on U.S. shores with a cost of $15, while a comparable shirt made in the U.S. would cost $25. The foreign entity would then pay a tariff of $10 per shirt.However, instead of good ol' Uncle Sam pocketing the tariff income on behalf of the federal ...
