The United States has been losing on international trade issues to our competitors for years. To most Americans this is obvious and undoubtedly contributed to Trump’s election. In all but a handful of sectors primarily associated with either Defense or the Internet (whether it be autos, information technology, aviation, semiconductors, electronics, etc., etc., etc.) American business, specifically manufacturing, has systematically lost market share to overseas competition and American workers are worse off in relative terms. Analysts frequently point to the obvious failures of Detroit and the dramatic decline in the domestic auto industry, but are American business executives incompetent in almost every other business sector that competes on the international playing field?
Of course, tariffs and duties are only part of the problem. Non-tariff barriers such as quotas, local content requirements, labeling, inspections, regulatory issues are more difficult to detect and stop than the obvious numerical barriers imposed using taxes and duties but are nonetheless significant barriers to companies wishing to base their operations in America and sell overseas. For example, when countries impose data restrictions (most have) that require information to be stored outside the U.S. that impacts the decisions of where those multibillion dollar data centers are built. Or when companies are forced into joint ventures in order to enter a market where their technologies are transferred and then stolen as has been well documented in China. Because of their insidious nature, non-tariff barriers have become...
