[per loin]

Our federal tax structure amounts to a tariff on American made products. By doing away with income and social security taxes, and switching to external tariffs, we, as consumers, still bear the ultimate burden of the taxes in the prices of what we buy, but the cost of producing American goods, vis-a-vis foreign goods, is radically reduced. In short, our tax structure should be designed for our, rather than other nations' benefit.

[ggekko]

"Our Fedral tax structure amounts to a tariff on American made products" .

Amen, brother. Add goofy environmental regulations, out of control "casino-like" litigation, lawless Federal bureaucracies like the EPA and Alice-in-Wonderland Antitrust laws and you have a difficult environment for any business including a manufacturing business.

Given these problems the only thing that has bailed out American business is a great environment for new technology development and our great advantages in productivity growth.

The structural problems in the US economy are 90% related to taxation and regulatory policy and 10% related to international trade.

With taxation and regulatory policies being equal, a typical American firm would wax its foreign competitors because of the American firm's access to our advanced transportation, communication networks and power systems. Developing countries are decades behind in these areas.