Does the moral high ground even matter anymore? It feels like the past decade or so has been an exercise in trying to convince us it’s no longer a thing anymore. The end justifies the means. Everyone’s mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Let’s look at just one single thing today- Tariffs- and explore what’s happening.

The current administration is using tariff’s to punish other countries, making their products either too expensive to sell or getting them to sharpen their accounting pencils even more than they already have, finding ways to treat their employees (those in China specifically) even worse than they already do, and rolling back costly efforts to make their facilities safer and less-polluting.

Where is the moral high ground in that? Is there an alternative that would help put manufacturing elsewhere (a small amount of which might move to the US), while at the same time benefitting the people working in those factories? And the cities that are being choked by pollution and seeing increasing health issues due to callous handling of waste?

I believe the answer is yes. We can have both. Create laws for imported products that require similar (but scaled back a bit to reflect economic realities) measures for employee safety and environmental protection as found in the US. There could be a tariff on those industries ignoring such practices, and an international commission tasked with measuring compliance.

The price of Chinese goods would necessarily increase. Pollution on the world stage would decrease. Human beings who happened by luck of the draw to be in China would benefit from better health. The US would benefit from doing something to better humanity overall.

That’s my thinking. Get away from everything being about punishment and an us vs them mentality and look for a way that’s the win is for both the US and humanity.