The US economy has prospered during periods of high tariffs. During the last 20 years, a period of low or no tariffs, disposable income for the average family has declined with factory jobs exported overseas. We’ve had a 20 year experiment with free trade and the results have been a disaster for the average citizen and the overall economy.
Factory jobs were exported overseas because the protectionism here distorted the real value of that labor. People were being paid high salaries for what amounted to semi-skilled and unskilled labor. It could not last.
The laws of economics are like the laws of gravity. You can only ignore them for so long before you have a really hard landing. We now live in a global economy and nothing is going to reverse that.