Blame Free Traitors™. If we have a war of attrition and can't make good on loses hunt down a Free Traitor™ and, you know what to do.
Free trade is not the reason we don’t have enough warships or subs or a modern nuke force. Free trade is not the reason we have an undersized military without enough armament. Free trade is not the reason we now lack the capacity to build and produce these things. We have the capacity to modernize our bomber fleet but we don’t.
Nothing has prevented us from building these things except we chose butter lots and lots of butter over guns.
When the Soviets flooded the Communist Block with weapons, building a huge stockpile of munitions and missles, cranked up aircraft and ship production, and built a huge nuke force, we matched them and then went them one better.