Agreed, especially when our neighbor to the south's currency has devalued from around 8:1 to 18:1 in the past decade or so...
If import taxes are high enough that it makes more sense to manufacture here with higher labor vs paying lower labor rates elsewhere and importing it, then manufacturing will come back. Even if manufacturing doesn't come back to the US, I would MUCH prefer to see manufacturing move to Mexico FROM China. With all of China's currency manipulation, their willingness to counterfeit everything, and their restrictions on media (they recently banned the iTunes store), trading with China isn't worth the cost. Plus having good jobs in Mexico removes some of the incentive for them to cross the border.
China's currency manipulation is an idea floating around a lot, however does anyone have some concrete evidence of it? I am not a supporter of China, just honestly curious about it. Capital and investments always tend to drive towards efficiency. So if manufacturing in-house, is made more efficient (by a combination of tech innovation and raising min wages - think socialism and putting the money printed by QE to fund wage increase) then it creates an environment for 'made in USA' to happen. Penalizing businesses by way of import taxes for pursuing efficiencies in capital allocation will only stifle growth as it impacts small business more than mega-corps that always get away with zero to no taxes using loopholes.
The most recent issue of "The Economist" has an extensive write up on GDP and why it is no longer a good measure of output in an economy dominated by service and not manufacturing. So, perhaps the low productivity and slow growth are not true reflections of the US economy today?
GDP is no longer a good measure of output because it's been inflated by QE and worthless printed trillions...how could you get an actual reading on GDP when organic growth is non existent....
Actually if you read the Economist, they said GDP was understating the real growth and productivity and well being of things because the GDP definition was geared towards manufacturing and not correctly counting service economy.