There are two basic reasons why Americans should oppose these sorts of human rights violations. First and foremost, if we Americans do not value human rights for non-Americans, it lessens the strength of our Constitutional conviction that all men are created equal, deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Failing to oppose human rights violations simply because the humans aren't American in a given case adds a hollow ring to those words, and brings their validity -- and applicability -- into serious question.
Second, without human rights, a nation cannot develop beyond a certain point. This point is contentious, and the Chinese government is currently embarked on a large-scale experiment attempting to disprove it. Yet when all developmental strategy is top-down, and the bottom is abused for suggesting alternatives, potentially good policy alternatives are lost. The people in charge don't always have the right answers, and when the people not in charge are disallowed from contributing to the marketplace of ideas, progress, and development, is stifled. From a purely economically selfish point of view, stifled foreign development harms America: poor people in Southeast Asia do not buy Big Macs or Cokes, much less Dells, Fords, or stock in General Electric.
One reason to support human rights that many Americans cite is that cheap goods produced in foreign markets might produce unfair competition for US workers. But this point is extremely limited. Sweatshop-made products aren't generally in competition with US goods. Sweatshops don't produce cars or semiconductors, but cheap clothing, toys, and the like. Many American unions complain that foreign sweatshops unfairly compete with them. But given that American union labor usually produces different goods, of different qualities, with different tools, technology, and machinery, the level of competition is actually quite minimal.
For the above reasons, something should be done to prevent the human rights abuses of sweatshops. What should be done, however, depends on the agency that can (or will) act. The course of government action will naturally differ from that of private action.
In government action, there are steps that both industrialized governments and Southeast Asian governments can take. Industrialized governments should take political steps to further their position on the sanctity of human rights, including the use of international organizations like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice to hold nations to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, if nations are signatories, or pressure them to become signatories of they are not. Industrialized governments can use their economic leverage as well, such as the World Trade Organization is doing in its negotiations with China, another major malefactor in human rights abuses for economic gain. Finally, industrialized governments should pressure Southeast Asian governments into stricter human rights and labor laws, and their observation and enforcement, and refuse to recognize human rights abuses as being part of an equally valid form of "Asian values."
