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They are pricing labor out of the market of American businesses

Yeah, like the $120K for an uneducated longshoreman (who's afraid of advanced technology, like, uh, barcodes).

You've put your finger on the crux of the immigration problem too. American labor has already priced itself out of the market, which is why so many industries that cannot move, like agriculture, depend on illegals to stay afloat. In my state, a minimum wage hamburger-turner at McDonalds makes almost $8 an hour. You can get high-technology, skilled, workers in Thailand or China, people who make silicon chips, program software, construct the mouse and keyboard I'm typing with right now, for well under $1 an hour (and in some cases for under a dollar a day).

Do the math.

Don't confuse the chip-makers and programmers with the manual laborers who stick 107 plastic keys onto a spongy plastic sheet, lay that on top of a PCB, solder a couple of wires to it, and slap a case around it (the latter group is the one that makes the $1/day).

The only reason why it's happening now (rather than 9 years ago when it might have saved a couple of American jobs) is that the DNC decided that the economy needed another push toward the cliff.

The point is, as a practical matter, we can't get the corporate tax elimination AND the regulatory reforms that we need passed unless we can get solid control of the House and Senate - the unions are tight with the Dems, and put a LOT of time and effort into electing them. Heck, the labor law reforms we need passed will be practically impossible to get.

The problem with Buchanan's protectionist approach is that it is merely a band-aid for an open fracture. The real solution is a lot tougher and messier, but it has to be done. We have to build a coalition of voters that can give us the congressional majorities and the Electoral College majority we will need to get the reform program passed.

The only question left is how we achieve that, and the way we do that is by getting enough votes to hold the House, Senate, and Presidency. And to hold them for as long as it takes to make these changes, AND to get the American people to see that those changes are not the end of the world.

Once that is done, it won't matter that we believe in free trade - because companies will look at the U.S., see that they don't have to pay a CENT in corporate taxes, they won't have to deal with regulations that cost a ton of money and bring back nothing, and that dealing with the labor unions does not mean you get taken to the cleaners - they'll head over here ASAP, and they'll come here and employ American workers.

That's the best way to ensure our economic and national security, not through protective tariffs that could only cause trade wars.