You're right. Plus as these businesses get bigger they get boggier and employees bust out and start there own business. The access to startup capital is by far the best in the USA.
I think most of these protectionists are simply very insecure. I have traveled the world and I sense these people are rightly worried that there is some one in China, or Laos, or Vietnam, that simply works harder and smarter. The protectionists are basically insecure and/or lazy. There are millions of very high paying US jobs that go unfilled every day in the US because people are too stupid or too lazy to do them.
GIVING these lazy and stupid Americans jobs (through protectionism) when there is someone over seas dying to work just frosts me. I'm not talking about low paying labor either. There is a need right now for thousands and thousands of skilled workers in Florida. These jobs pay up to $100/per hour or more. You do need a skill, diligence, industriousness, and an education, but they are here in droves.
Your tagline is "elections matter" but your attitude is pure "let them eat cake".
You are a modern version of the Liberty League. During the Depression they were a pressure group formed to fight the New Deal. They came off as rich people in yachts and penthouses smugly lecturing the unemployed on the breadlines about bootstrap rugged individualism. In short, just like you.
The Liberty League enabled the Democrats to be majority party for a generation. As will you if unchecked.