“the fact that U.S. companies pay the highest corporate income tax rate in the world (or second highest, depending how you calculate), and the fact that they must pay it on their world-wide income actually encourages them to offshore their operations”
I agree with you on this fact, however corporations have very sharp lawyers who look for every loophole, and end up paying less in taxes than you would think. Plus, that doesn’t stop the facts that I listed regarding the multitude of unfair trade practices that our trading partners (and I use the word partners very loosely) engage in, while we (Mr. nice guy) are played for saps. There are some things we can do to clean up our own act regarding business, but that doesn’t stop the fact that we are being undercut right and left by foreign businesses that are being subsidized by their gov’ts, world trade courts that continually vote against our interests, tariffs, inability to get our goods into foreign markets that can get into ours, oil cartels that milk us then turn around and enhance their armanents with the profit they make off of us, a dollar that is falling which has good points and bad points, but when it gets so low, other countries will switch to another currency like the Euro and squeeze us even more financially. I believe your totally free trade policy, which isn’t free, is highly myopic.