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Originally Posted by jayeff
Up to a point...
Although consumers can only choose among what is available and as you noted, Sony make better products than Zenith, etc. Walk into Wal-Mart and if you want a particular t-shirt or whatever, you either buy it or not, regardless of its source. Manufacturers and retailers are responsible, along with consumers, for increasing trade imbalances.
Politicians (although not exclusively) George Bush are responsible for creating tax laws and all kinds of other incentives which exaggerate the advantage of manufacturing in low-wage countries and for not attempting to discourage moves abroad.
It's also somewhat facile to write it all off as free-market economics, because although that statement is essentially correct, the term means different things in different places. For example, Japan is extremely good at protecting itself against imports while allowing its companies to operate freely. Come to that, the long-term outlook that most Japanese investors have (as opposed to Wall St investors' demand for increased profits year-on-year) also makes their "free market" function quite differently from ours.
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Yes the Japanese market protects its product very well. But unfortunately for that protectionism, it's economy has been in a recession for over 6 years. It's banking system nearly collapsed without help of the government bailing it out.
Bust can't discourage moves from moving manufacturing of anything to lower wage countries. NAFTA was signed before he entered office. There is a catch-22 with imposing tariffs on products. If the US imposes tariffs on let's say textile goods from China, China will in turn place tariffs on American goods. That won't help us and just cause a bigger trade deficit with China.
This is the very reason why the US and EU was walking on eggshells with dealing with textile imports from China for the very reason if 2.3 billion people in China can't buy something from the EU or US because of tariffs, the EU & US would lose out.