Tarrifs are used to level the field and when goods are shipped from one country to another at prices so low the sellers/manufacturers in the receiving country can't compete, something need to be done if the receiving nations' economy is expected to work or, at least, not suffer from the effects of dumping. When a country like China doesn't care if they cause enormous amounts of pollution, their cost will be lower, so they can gain because the pollution supposedly doesn't affect other countries, even if it actually does end up reaching other shores.
There are, however, other countries that manufacture high quality goods and manufacturing by Asian countries has changed locations in the past- TVs used to come mainly from Japan if they weren't made in the US and when they were killing US-based manufacturers, the US implemented tariffs on Japanese TVs, so Lucky Goldstar (Goldstar, they became LG) bought Zenith and a foreign-based manufacturer made their TVs in the US, so any tariffs on their goods became moot. Sony built plants in Mexico, so they weren't affected by the tariffs, either. This was in the '70s, when people understood that products flooding the US market was a bad thing but with all of the "It's a World market, so importing is a good thing because it helps people in impoverished nations have a living wage and we should pay them the same as US workers" crap. Our government is supposed to care more about OUR country than the rest. Why is this so hard to understand?
Someone in many poor nations could live like a king for the rest of their life on the average annual wage in the US.
I'm not saying we should tax the crap out of the rest of the World, but anyone who looks into how other country's tariffs are set, they would see that the US has generally been very lenient.
