Free Trade isn’t the problem.
Where American industry is in trouble, it is because it is weighed down with taxation, over-regulation, unionization and an increasingly poorly educated or tax-demotivated workforce.
Raising tariffs/subsidies and so forcing Americans to buy their stuff from feather-bedded internal suppliers (e.g. General Motors) would not solve these problems.
The only reason Americans have a reasonable standard of living at all is because people across the world make stuff well and cheaply, and compete to bring it to America’s door.
Don’t like buying stuff from other people? Try reducing America’s internal barriers to wealth-production. But it’s simply shameful to complain that American factories have to deal with competition.
“Free trade” is indeed the problem.
Get out of the way.
And when you’ve done all that, you’ll find that the Chinese can still under-cut us on price.
There is no free trade where currency manipulation is allowed. And having a peg of the yuan to the US dollar insures that the Chinese are able to undercut our industry every day, all day.
The standard PR spin of the “free trade uber alles!” folks is wearing rather thin. Walmart bought this hook line and sinker. And now, with American wages and household incomes stagnating and falling, Walmart is having to cut prices to make sure they can still sell the imported Chinese crap.