are you familiar with the concept of competitive advantage? if their workers can make the same product at a fraction of the cost, we are at a competitive disadvantage in the production of that item and should put our workers to use on something more productive, like an industry we DO have a competitive advantage in.
If it's cheaper to buy clothes made in China/Taiwan/whatever, why in the world should we waste money, resources, and manpower producing more expensive clothing when we could just buy the cheaper stuff and use all of that stuff to produce, say, microchips (just an example)?