Great Britain's economy collapsed because of WWI not its Free Trade policies.Bartlett's revisionism.
In fact, it was under Free Trade that it came to dominate the world economy.
Only so long as there were no real peer competitors who played by the same rules. They soon didn't. Just like China isn't now, and never will, but will give free trade only lip-service.
Adam Smith showed the means by which Free Trade INCREASES the Wealth of Nations. You should read it sometime.
Probably read and digested it long before you. But it was never a definitive work for the U.S. Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures was.
Even his enemies largely concede the economic edifice we have today is largely one that Hamilton and those who followed the resulting "American System" of Henry Clay and later of Lincoln and all Republicans can take credit for.
History demonstrates that Free Trade was England's strength and it was the abandonment of it which helped cause a decline. Though it was more a case of the relative economic power of the US and Germany growing rather than a collapse of England.
China cannot indefinitely keep the Yuan low or its wages low when the economy is booming. It has no power to repeal the laws of economics. And supply and demand will eventually change the relation in effect currently.
Japan is instructive in this regard. For years it was the world's leading producer of electronics because of price advantages. No longer now those products have been shifted to other lower price producers because the Japanese wage rates and costs have risen enough to remove the profit of making them in Japan. China will see the same result in the years to come.
Alexander Hamilton's system was NOT protectionist. It was a REVENUE tariff with rates averaging about 15%. He intended to encourage domestic manufacturing through a system of bounties, prizes and subsidies NOT a protective tariff.
In fact, when the Congress became overtly protectionist and enacted the Tariff of Abominations it provoked the South into a near secession.
Trying to tie Hamilton to your lame theories is revolting. He would have preferred Free Trade as his economic writings illustrate but for the need to 1) correct the distortions imposed upon the American economy by the Colonial policy of England and 2) the lack of a viable alternative for Federal revenues.
I would bet that you reject the other principal pillar of his financial system, the National Bank.