How is Trump's proposed tariffs different from "Ethical Tariffs"? The effect is the same. The only difference is the packaging. To re-package Trump's tariff in "progressive" language, you just strip out the xenophobic, racist language, and say that you doing this for the benefit of Mexican workers who are being exploited. Indeed, they are so exploited that more Mexicans have been leaving the U.S., then coming into it.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016/01/05/more-mexicans-leave-the-us-than-come-across-the-border
The study shows a net loss of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. One million Mexican migrants and their children left the U.S. for Mexico, while just over 860,000 left Mexico for the United States.
While this may seem like a desirable outcome from an immigration control perspective, it may signal problems in the U.S. economy. Among other things, it means that the children of Mexican returnees – kids who are U.S. citizens – are leaving the country. U.S. losses may be Mexico’s gain in a world market that rewards multilingual workers.
https://www.change.org/p/bernie-sanders-replace-nafta-and-the-trans-pacific-partnership-with-ethical-tariffs
The SOLUTION, is a paradigm shift; a new breed of trade agreement that economically incentivizes that corporations produce their goods in locations with humane labor standards and living-wage pay; and economically incentivizes that hosting governments create/nurture those conditions for corporations to exist within.
Let's call this solving concept "Ethical Tariffs." It's the proposal of a trade pact featuring the largest number of participating nations that would be achievable. Ideally, each participating nation would agree to levy trade tariffs based on a sliding scale in which the tariff being applied would be commensurate with a grade assigned the exporting nation's labor conditions, minimum rate of pay, and general human rights record. With the grade to be assigned, presumably, by an independent governing body agreed upon/created by the participating nations.
Were an agreement such as this to be entered into by a large enough number of nations, it would provide nations an economic incentive to ensure fair and humane treatment of their citizens, generally, and of its workers, in particular. (Economic peer pressure, to put it crudely.) Nations with poor records in these areas would find it difficult to bring their goods to foreign markets, because of their low "grade" and resultingly high tariffs on their goods; while the nations with excellent records in these areas would find it easy to bring their goods to foreign markets, because of their high "grade" and low (or even nonexistent) tariffs on their goods.
Already, nations have their credit rated by credit-rating agencies; and receive a grade that is heeded, and responded to, by their fellow nations; because money is just that important. The leap in awareness, here, need only be that governments should agree to have rated, and co-heeded by one another, the standards they provide for their labor force; because, theoretically, people are just that important.
We all know what a credit rating is, and how apparently essential it is; well, "Ethical Tariffs" would behave as a labor rating, and be at least equally essential.
Corporations, meanwhile, would organically tend to reward nations that secure high minimum standards for their labor force (and wider human rights for their wider citizenry). This reward would occur when corporations seek cheap or free exportation of their product by purposefully locating their manufacturing within the borders of the nations with the lowest (or nonexistent) tariffs levied against them, due to their high labor standards. What might even occur, could be a race, of sorts, between nations; a race to treat workers humanely. Planet earth has hosted many an arms race... maybe someday its first human-rights race.
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