I'm not one of the economists that knee jerk reject protectionism, but I don't think it would help that much either. Trading partners won't accept tariffs without reciprocating. The US might be big enough now to get away with this to some degree, but that won't last forever, and tariffs would probably accelerate that reduction in influence.

I'm all for tariffs when there is some other goal that makes sense (for example I think tariffs should bake in the cost of environmental or other regulatory compliance we have that the foreign trading partner does not).

Yeah, free trade offers a larger pie to those of us who earn a slice of it.

I think one of Trump’s biggest mistakes was (attempting to) wage a tariff war with Europe, instead of creating a larger coalition for an economic war against China.

China’s not free trade anyways (not in terms of tariffs, but in terms of foreign businesses operating locally, and in terms of manipulating currency) so there’s only so much they can retaliate...