I see where you are coming from, but I think there are better ways to handle those issues than blanket tariffs. For example, you can get clothes from Bangladesh for cheaper than Norway because Bangladesh pays workers much less, (probably) has much lower environmental regulations, and the focus is on price over quality.
Adding a tariff to goods from Bangladesh would not improve the goods, it would just squeeze the business to cut even more corners to remain competitive, and likely put a lot of poor people out of work. Additionally a tariff on goods from a country is likely to be retaliated.
If the end goal is reducing production of garbage products at great impact to the environment and the workers, laws can focus specifically on those factors. We already place antidumping and counterveiling duties on goods that we deem are priced with unfair business practices, why not do more of the same for unfair labor practices, or environmental practices?
If someone can pay Ethiopian farmers a fair wage to produce landrace coffee (where it grows natively), and the environmental costs of shipping it to the US are accounted for, I don’t think it should be arbitrarily upcharged relative to monocrop coffee grown in a narrow band of expensive former rainforest in Hawaii.
I see where you are coming from, but I think there are better ways to handle those issues than blanket tariffs. For example, you can get clothes from Bangladesh for cheaper than Norway because Bangladesh pays workers much less, (probably) has much lower environmental regulations, and the focus is on price over quality.
Adding a tariff to goods from Bangladesh would not improve the goods, it would just squeeze the business to cut even more corners to remain competitive, and likely put a lot of poor people out of work. Additionally a tariff on goods from a country is likely to be retaliated.
If the end goal is reducing production of garbage products at great impact to the environment and the workers, laws can focus specifically on those factors. We already place antidumping and counterveiling duties on goods that we deem are priced with unfair business practices, why not do more of the same for unfair labor practices, or environmental practices?
If someone can pay Ethiopian farmers a fair wage to produce landrace coffee (where it grows natively), and the environmental costs of shipping it to the US are accounted for, I don’t think it should be arbitrarily upcharged relative to monocrop coffee grown in a narrow band of expensive former rainforest in Hawaii.