The globalists love to come out with that trinket talisman every time they get a whiff of protectionism coming. If protectionism was so bad, then how did we manage to grow so powerful while it was a significant part of US economic policy? By the end of the Civil War, which was far more about tariffs than about slavery, we had achieved a level of industrial and military power that had the British trembling with fear. Little of the industrial base that enabled the protectionist Union to smash the free-trade Confederacy would've existed without the protectionism that made sure those industries could grow.
Excellent points...
The British were the first European power to advocate Free Trade in the 19th C....and it led to the protectionist United States and protectionist Germany surpassing the British in manufacturing and GDP by the end of the century. The British went from THE economic power to getting bypassed by relatively new nations (Germany only formed as a nation in 1871).
The “protectionist” system has historically been successful...whereas the Free Trade model has not.