While I'll agree that OSHA/EPA are often overzealous when you look at the cost-effectiveness (i.e. dollars spent per statistical life saved), and that labor is

While I'll agree that OSHA/EPA are often overzealous when you look at the cost-effectiveness (i.e. dollars spent per statistical life saved), and that labor is expensive, I don't think the rapid abandonment of our standards in a race to the bottom is the solution. The problem is that places like China have low/non-existent standards that are politically acceptable there (or citizens can't say otherwise). This is their comparative advantage -- not accounting for the externalities of their industrial efforts. As Larry Summers said, some countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted. Not great in the long term perhaps, but harmful for western workers competing for the same contracts in the short term. So what do you do? Tarrifs on imported goods to make US production more competitive? Limiting trade to countries that have similar standards regarding externalities? Or is it okay for countries to have low/no work and environmental standards because that's (at least in the beginning) the road to economic development?