Before WTO membership for Red China, and MFN/Normal status for same, and before NAFTA, we had a functioning economy here in the U.S. We also didn’t have to worry about spyware in the electronics going into our military hardware.
If we could function without massive trade with the Chicoms in 1985, we can do it now.
It’s odd that you picked 1985 to make your argument. We had a then-record trade deficit that year:
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-01-30/news/mn-2099_1_u-s-trade-deficit
I haven’t drilled down into the data from that year, but Japan was the big trade bugaboo back then.