Protectionism vs. Leveling The Playing Field
There are not many intellectually honest people left who doubt that burning so much fossil fuel over the last 50 years has caused massive damage to the world’s environment. And that this damage continues to accelerate and worsen.
From New York City, San Francisco, London, and New Orleans to Amsterdam and Barcelona, millions of people live in low lying areas near the coast. It won’t take much global warming at all for these areas to cease to exist as dry land.
Deforestation in the Amazon basin and Asia is reducing the earth’s ability to deal with these pollutants.
Worldwide all civilized societies need to find a way to encourage less wasteful and more environmentally sound policies. Now that the United States of America no longer has a leader who is brain dead, America should take a leading role in this, along with the European Union and Japan.
In all of the so called “advanced world” production and jobs have moved off shore to locations where environmental rules don’t exist or are laughed at. In the sacred name of market forces production has moved to countries which do not pay their workers a livable wage, do not provide health care to the populace, routinely employ child labor, and ignore routine workplace safety regulations.
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It clearly is not protectionism if a country says that if goods are imported which were produced in a place where proper environmental policies are ignored, then an import duty or tax should be imposed at the time of importation which would bring the item up to the price it would have cost if they had followed the environmental rules of America or Europe.
Testing of food, agricultural products, and children’s toys at the time of importation for harmful chemicals like pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals needs to be increased greatly. No honor system certified by the producing country…actual testing at the time of importation.
It is not in any way protectionism if Europe or Canada impose import duties on products which were produced in countries where much of the population do not have access to the health care system.
The same “leveling of the playing field” import duties need to be levied on anything being imported from a country where workplace safety and child labor laws are not enforced. The same conceptual idea would apply to anything which is transported half way around the globe. Growing or making something in Australia and then shipping it many thousands of miles to Europe or America is OK and should be allowed, but an import duty needs to be imposed at the time of importation which discourages this wasteful transportation process.
None of the above is the reactionary Buy In America polemics. These are simply sound ideas which will greatly improve the environment and the lives of millions of people, both in America and Europe, but also in the poor and corrupt countries.
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