Buchanan mentions history. He’s clearly no economic historian. The Great Depression was deepened and prolonged by protectionism (world wide). You can’t unilaterally be protectionist — economists call that the “beggar thy neighbour” strategy. The problem is — the neighbours will play the same game.
Our *neighbors* are playing the game and they’re cheating to win.
People treat the concepts of Free Trade and Protectionism too much like religion and too little like the pragmatic tools they should be.
Free Trade is only universaly good if you run a multi-national corporation and protectionism is only universaly desirable if your a union boss.
For most of the rest of us, we want our nation to be economicaly competitive and we want to have a reasonably good quality of life.
The way to achieve that is a smart combination of open trade agreements and strategic, limited protectionism.
Believe it or not, there are instances when protectionism can enhance long term economic competitiveness not stifle it (for instance when an industry suffers a momentery crisis or when trying grow a new industry sector that’s not quite upto competing with the rest of the world from birth.... but could be if given a little space and breathing room to grow before facing competition, or buffering resources from the results of an overly volatile market).