Why doesn't the US work with Canada to protect North American manufacturing jobs?

Canada is dealing with the same loss of manufacturing jobs as the United States and I'm an American who has a lot of friends in Canada suffering from job losses to cheap labor markets in China and India.





Why can't the US meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to coordinate a USA-Canada policy to encourage multi-national corporations to keep their jobs here in the US and Canada.





Manitoba, which is like Canada's equivalent of the USA midwest, lost tremendous factory jobs in northern cities in the province. And one of their songs summarizes it like this, "Economics Don't Mean Nothin' to a dyin' Paper Town."





We need to work with Canada, not compete with Canada, which means we should NOT abandon NAFTA because NAFTA isn't the problem!!!! The problem lies outside North America.|||The reason the corporations move to countries with cheap labor is to increase profits. Unless you find a way to make it less profitable to a greedy corporation, they will continue to close factories here and move. They save money on wages, benefits and do not have to deal with unions. The increase in their bottom line does not, however, inspire them to reduce prices...they raise them! Maybe your suggestion about working with Canada is a good one....we don't seem to have the answer!





ADD: asp2writ: I like your idea of a very high import tax. A boycott would also help, if we could figure out how to convince the public.|||Free trade in general is the problem, and the disillusioned Obama supporters who think great, lets tax the rich, they are the problem, when we do that, they will continue to move. We need higher import taxes, insanely high import taxes, so companies won't leave.





I think if we force american consumer products to be made in america, that would fix a lot of problems.|||Actually the problem is in America. Businesses can make more money outside of the U.S. We have the highest business taxes in the world and our people are paid the highest wages in the world so costs are much higher. We can't lower wages...but we can lower taxes. What do you think our choice should be?|||The problem is, if so many Americans think that Barack Obama is a Marxist/Communist/Socialist, then those same Americans probably see a hammer and sickle in the middle of the Maple Leaf because Canada is more liberal even than the Democrats.





And Stephen Harper's an a$$hole.|||Its the result of globalization....


Labor is very cheap in China vs in the US...


A laborer job in China roughly cost around US$ 500 per year vs the US$ 13,000 in the US.


Now tell me, are you losing the jobs to the Asian people or are you exploiting them?|||The manufacturing jobs are leaving the US and Canada for the same reason...to find cheaper labor outside of these two countries. Labor is too expensive in the US and Canada.|||Pretty much agree with you 100%