> If you compare buying imported crap from a big-box to importing it yourself, you're paying the big-box for your "free" warranty. They build it into the price.

> If you compare buying imported crap from a big-box to importing it yourself, you're paying the big-box for your "free" warranty. They build it into the price. But 30-50% of your cash is ending up offshore with no benefit to your own economy. That's the brilliant part of free trade—in total, the amount gained by exporting will generally equal or be greater than if you were to tax on imports. Lessening consumer options is almost never a good thing. There's a bit more to "support" than a warranty. For example: if a person buys a piece of software, they should reasonably expect it to last until they move onto an operating system incompatible with it, no? What if an API the program uses is deprecated/removed for security reasons, ala Microsoft Gadgets. There's also the problem of long-term customer support. Your average user uses CS at least a few times over the course of the product's lifespan. A person who lives in Estonia or Poland doesn't even have a company creating say, a smartphone. They aren't competing with anything, so why punish both the company and consumer for getting a necessity in the modern age, a smartphone?