if anything is making u.s. manufacturing non-competative, its continued reliance on oil and coal, instead of converting and innovating advances in cleaner sources of energy. as for china, well compitition for world markets was the excuse for the tpp. and the tpp would have been a disaster because it robbs govcernments of soverignty and hands it to corporate control. there are so many ironies in trumps posture and probably real ignorance.

and america's mismanagement of environment, is the most real and present danger to the u.s., humanity, and the planet.
not that everyone else hasn't to some degree done so also, and china is guilty of this too, but of all of them really, we have the least excuse for it.

Coal is dying, and what's killing it is renewable energy. The argument the idiot right puts forth is that without subsidies, renewable energy isn't practical. What they don't say is that non-renewable energies have been benefiting from the equivalent of subsidies for decades, starting when major oil production first commenced in the 1890's. Back then it cost today's equivalent of $500 to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground. This gave rise to basically a first year federal tax break called the Intangible Drilling Costs deduction, which lets companies write off almost all the cost of drilling. For example, the tertiary injection deduction is permitted to be written off in full the first year, rather than the usual business depreciation over several years. The Percentage Depletion Tax Credit authored in 1926 lets companies deduct a flat percentage of income received from oil or gas wells, frequently resulting in tax deductions in excess of investment. In other words, they end up paying little to no taxes on their production of oil and gas. Tax credits for coal production go back even further to the late 1700's. Today, more than 2 centuries later, they're still receiving over $5 billion in subsidies a year. Unfortunately, we still have the old coal and oil barons in place such as Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, who fight any attempt to improve the energy supply of the U.S. if it isn't coal or oil related and want to destroy the EPA because clean air rules make it much harder to use oil and coal. Frankly, I'd like to be able to breathe the air I'm in.