Sorry it took me so long to get back to this.
It would take an expert on international trade to really offer up any serious opinions on that. I wouldn't know where to start to be honest. The only thing that comes to mind is what everyone else is thinking --to keep corporations from going overseas, offer tax breaks.
I don't think that is the only alternative.
We could also impose larger tariffs on "American" companies who choose to outsource or otherwise move production overseas.
We could also impose punitive tariffs on companies who refuse to meet certain environmental or labor standards when they choose to move their production overseas in order to avoid our (more expensive) standards.
Tax breaks only hold off the inevitable loss of American jobs. They do not provide any kind of real, long-term incentive to keep jobs here and they also, at the same time, strip much needed money from the government to help those affected by corporate bankruptcy/downsizing, outsourcing, etc.
States and cities often compete to offer the highest tax breaks to entice a company to relocate there, but there is no guarantee that after the tax breaks, road building, school building, downtown renovation, environmental exemptions, etc the company will stay. Some tax breaks could be used in tandem with other measures, like, say, they have to guarantee a certain amount of jobs or if they jump ship they have to pay back the amount they received in tax breaks.
Yeah, it is "protectionist," but this country and others were made "great" by protectionist policies. And developing countries could also be made "great" through protectionist policies of their own (just like we had in our infancy). But those who try to do so are deemed to be hostile enemies and must be crushed.
Our policies right now are
still protectionist...just that we are protecting the corporations and not the workers, neither here nor elsewhere. It is a win-win for the companies and a complete and utter failure for workers.
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea