Reply #5: I'd pay more. Sweatshop labor produces lower quality jeans. It's also a national security issue. [View All]

[Selatius]

In the old system of tariffs, the pair made in China would cost as much if not more than the pair made in the USA.

The tariffs were put in place partly as a matter of national security. In the 1800s, it was so that we would not be too dependent upon the British Empire or any other European colonial power for manufactured goods. In the 1900s, it meant that we wouldn't be so easily cut off and strangled from our goods and materials. We wouldn't want the 3rd Reich or the Empire of Japan making the things we buy.

In the end, it paid off in victory. Our system favored American manufacturing plants here in the US. When the Second World War came, we had become the "arsenal of democracy." We used our factories to make the bombs, planes, tanks, and guns that eventually won the war and turned back the tide of darkness.

Today, most of our products come from a nation run by a brutal, authoritarian dictatorship.

We have forgotten a valuable lesson, at the expense of our independence.