Reminder: the USA became the world's most powerful industrial economy PRECISELY by using tariffs. This is the model that PRC is now using against us, with great success.
PRC is at WAR with the USA. You have a pipe-dream globaloney vision of friendly PRC Gummint types--forgetting Tianamen Square and the millions and millions of Chinese executed by the scumbags running that fiefdom.
Get real.
No it didn't and stop repeating those lies. Those tariffs were in the 1800s when we were a DEVELOPING nation, a third world nation with massive investments coming in from Europe. Those tariffs also kept us restricted.
When we started to remove them in the 20s our economy boomed even further.
In the 50s when we entered our golden age, who were our competitors? Europe? Naaah, bombed out.
Russia? naah, ditto. Asia? Naaah, still recovering from colonialism.
We became the world't most powerful industrial economy by stripping the tariffs and opening up to capitalism -- we became the most competitive by allowing competition and stripping big government and regulations and socialist practises
Those tariffs protected american workers and encouraged corporate america to invest it's capital dollars that came from american workers buying their products, back into their own country to create more jobs. We have lost most of the blue collar jobs and the white collar jobs are next.
We expect our citizens to be loyal to our country. We should expect no less of corporate america. We condem americans for buying chinese products with their money but applaud corporations in the name of free trade for investing it's billions of american capital dollars in the same country, creating a much richer enemy.
Of course you'll hear the same BS that the blue collar workers heard. That you can compete with anyone. You can, if you give up your standard of living and live like they do.There is no such thing as free trade. Someone has to pay and so far it has been the american worker and sooner or later so will our country and everyone in it including the politicans and corporate America. Your money is where your allegence is.
Henry Ford said it best when critized by other industial leaders for the higher wage he paid his workers. He said " I want my workers to be able to buy the product they are making". He was smart enough to know that his workers where his customers.