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If protecting American industry, America's standard of living, America's future, America's very military security doesn't come under "promoting the general welfare", then what pray tell does ?

Government can only help businesses become competitive by providing subsidies or cutting taxes. Beyond that, it has no impact on our competitiveness.

Historically, free trade has been the mantra of the dominant exporting power because it served its interests. There is nothing the least bit sacred about it. If it does not serve your interests, there is no reason to cling to it like it was gospel. The end to be served is national prosperity a point you are incapable of comprehending.

If you don't have free trade, you have tariffs. You and I pay more for goods and services and receive less. That is equally dangerous to national prosperity. And don't bother even trying to trot out the "well, then domestic markets would be created and preserved by protectionist tariffs". For example, some of those markets (ie. automobiles) are themselves dependent on foreign resources (ie. oil) that either aren't available or aren't being produced in sufficient quantities. Free trade allows us to exchange our resources (ie. technology) for those of other countries (ie. Saudi Arabia). So, in the absence of free trade, national security is severely challenged. Anti-free traders want to pretend that all markets occur in a vacuum. Not true. Markets are related.

Free trade vs tariffs has always been debated in terms of how it served that end. So it has always been throughout American history because We the People have always insisted that that we make the rules, not selfish, narrow capital interests

You're basically arguing that mediocre Americans who have been reduced to Pavlovian button-pushers over the past 50 years should be carried along by protectionist measures. That sounds remarkably close to Communist theology. It didn't work in the Soviet Union, it doesn't work in North Korea, and it won't work in the future. Embrace the reality of your own obsolescence. Work to change it.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with obsolescence.

There is practically no knowledge job that cannot be done much cheaper by an Indian or Chinese. The Indian programmer does absolutely nothing different from the Silicon Valley programmer. He just does it much cheaper. And the Chinese manufacturer with an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, owned by the Chinese military operating in a protected, subsidized environment, financed by bank loans which are simply written off is under no profit margin pressure. He can simply export America to death. Pukin Dog is simply the beneficiary of a lucky historical accident, that the airline industry training facilities have always been the USNAF and the USAF. India and China do not have huge, technically sophisticated air forces. And besides, pilot skills are heavily regulated by the FAA so airlines cannot simply outsource pilots willy nilly. Anything that can be done at a desk, however, Chinese or Indians can do.