I believe “free trade” could have been done differently.
As it started it had hope.
However we did not demand reciprocity. We jumped in without insisting on protections for our own manufacturing.
We signed, and we made a lot of money. Now we fact the results of that...
Our manufacturing is gone. Our government has become a HUGE expensive hand-out.
And almost less than half of Americans now pay taxes.
It is time to recognize we did it wrong. And back-track.
Now.
Not in four years.
Now.
The type of manufacturing in question is not coming back, no matter what government does. Even Chinese workers are gradually being replaced by automation. Some factories are already starting to come back onshore due to higher transportation and raw materials costs, but jobs aren't coming with them - robots are. The age of the Middle Class American Factory Worker is long gone - and the manual stuff will move on to Africa as Asia slowly gets too expensive.
We could perhaps require that American companies get all public infrastructure contracts - but we could not then afford to complete any of those projects unless union labor was explicitly prohibited (and imagine how that would go over.)
We are undergoing a major economic shift just like the Industrial Revolution. In that time farmers could move to the city and work in factories - today, so far, factory workers have little to shift to besides lower-paying service work. And that is almost entirely the fault of government.
Our government has been shaped for a century to answer to the needs and priorities of Industrial Age companies (especially the banks) - thus, our system of laws does not account for the potential of the individual in the Information Age and in fact actively works to stifle him in an attempt to curry political favor from banks, industrialists, and antiquated union labor.
The computer/Internet boom of the late 90's largely happened because government was caught flat-footed and didn't know how to respond or regulate or tax what was going on. Some analogous development will no doubt come along that we can't foresee right now, resulting in another Information Age mini-boom though repurposing idled factory workers and doing it so quickly that the statists can't cope with it. Such booms are much more likely to take hold if government keeps out of the way.
Unfortunately, using government to erect and enforce trade barriers is not going to achieve the desired purpose - government will get stronger, but the economy won't.
Free trade policies may have ended the American Industrial Revolution a decade too early. But ending them now can't bring it back.