>What is needed is the power of Labor (ie unions etc) to be applied in the foreign country, by having restrictions on goods and services that are not provided by Labor with fair conditions.
Although this would generally negate the need for tariffs, there are serious issues:
-You can't enforce this. It's a very different country on the other side of the globe.
-You can't properly observe working conditions for the entire supply chain (and conversation on what constitutes "fair conditions" can enter the realm of philosophy very quickly)
-Even if labor was in control of production, they could still act maliciously as a group
-Small transient fluctuations in efficiency are magnified without a hard cutoff to stop them from using the extra capital to become too big and undercut competition
And on top of that, rich countries have to face a sharp recession while the poor countries catch up. That's not a small amount of time. In much of Europe we already have 1-2 generations that faced very harsh economic conditions because of this. Generosity has limits. Yes, free trade (generally, not always) allows poor countries to develop faster, but they grow asymmetrically and the working/middle class of rich countries suffers too.
Although this would generally negate the need for tariffs, there are serious issues:
-You can't enforce this. It's a very different country on the other side of the globe.
-You can't properly observe working conditions for the entire supply chain (and conversation on what constitutes "fair conditions" can enter the realm of philosophy very quickly)
-Even if labor was in control of production, they could still act maliciously as a group
-Small transient fluctuations in efficiency are magnified without a hard cutoff to stop them from using the extra capital to become too big and undercut competition
And on top of that, rich countries have to face a sharp recession while the poor countries catch up. That's not a small amount of time. In much of Europe we already have 1-2 generations that faced very harsh economic conditions because of this. Generosity has limits. Yes, free trade (generally, not always) allows poor countries to develop faster, but they grow asymmetrically and the working/middle class of rich countries suffers too.