I think part of the story here is that as we regulate things at home we also out source activity that wouldn't fly here to those African regions?

That may keep it out of sight but if it's still happening it might have been better to do it in a managed way at home.

Its exactly this. And the majority of persons in powerful regulatory roles completely don’t get or comprehend this effect.

When regulatory efforts depart from reality,and fail to find the correct middle ground, this happens:

The reality still exists, and will always find its expression in one of the following:

- people circumvent rules and go criminal

- undesired behaviours move elsewhere where the regulation doesn’t exist

- sections of an economy die

- issues remain unaddressed with the over regulated issues becoming too taboo to even discuss in a sane way.

The US can't do much about other countries. We can definitely control how and who we outsource to, but the past 30 years of US government doesn't make me confident that we'll do that anytime soon.

But that's a tiny bit tangential from regulations.

“All outsourced, vendor, and subcontractor companies down the entire production/waste chain to the raw material must meet US environmental regulations.”

Done, fixed the loophole.