I remember when I was stationed in Japan back in the early 70's. Had a Mazda factory right next door to the base where I was. Got to know some of the workers there. They made the equivalent of 35 cents an hour and worked 12-14 hour days. They lived in company housing, bought their clothes and food from company stores etc.....basically, the company owned them. Kind of sounds like the old coal mining camps here in this country before the UMW doesn't it?

This was at the time of the Oil Embargo and Nixon devaluing the dollar days. The Japanese were building smaller better cars and flooding the markets here in the U.S. with them as the U.S. companies were slow in gearing up to change their technology over to more fuel efficient and longer lasting cars....of course the U.S. companies were not able to use company owned slaves to build their cars, but no matter, the U.S. government was not supporting them either. The U.S. was allowing these cars into the country with very little import taxes or fees so we could help build up the economy of their economy...while at the same time, any vehicle produced by the U.S. coming into port in Japan was taxed at 100% of the MSRP of the vehicle. Of course very few Japanese could afford to buy an American made vehicle when they had to pay twice the price that a domestically made vehicle would cost them. Hell, I sold a 5 year old Bonneville convertable I had shipped over there for more than I paid for it originally and the Japanese that bought it thought he was getting a great deal.

We are our own worst enemies when it comes to fair trade to support our American workers and our American made products.