Fair Trade is by necessity Government Managed Trade and comes with all the petty interferences and controls and inefficiencies of any government managed anything. Free trade with controlled borders and no welfare and low or no business taxes and few regulations allows Americans to be what Americans have been for a century and more i.e. the most productive workers on earth per unit of input. That means a $15 an hour American (market rat $15, not union) produces more than 15 $1 per hour Malaysians. Businesses and industry would flood back into this country and employment would soar causing rising wages.
How are ignoring illegals or paving the streets with H1B Visas not examples of regulatory capture, the very worst sort of regulation?
The damn labor market is completely distorted at both ends of the spectrum without even considering regulations and other Federal BS. It's really simple, put Americans back to work and throw the foreign labor out.
No one is going to give a damn about the theoretical ideal when they can't afford food without Foodstamps and can't pay to heat their shack in the winter. Americans working again is the start of the solution.
Deregulation so far has deregulated the banks and concentrated corporate control into fewer hands so their margins are fatter which means nothing to 99% of the population. If you want fewer regulations you have to do it in tandem with shedding the foreigner labor that's here on both the high and low end of the spectrum or it's going to be seen as nothing but making still fatter margins for the 1%.
The money men that run the country are never going to give a damn about regulations, meaning nothing will be done, unless and until they have to make their money here in the US where those regulations impact them. Until then they can be for whatever democrat fascist regulation the self-rightous democrat thugs propose and it doesn't cost them a dime.
Not if the American factory, equipment and knowhow is moved to Malaysia where the $1.00 per hour workers can be hired and trained, and then the product shipped to the US tariff free.