Before, during and after the Founding Fathers, America has had some form of Protectionist trade policies. Not to charge all of us money, but to protect our interests, which include our businesses, our national sovereignty and our way of life.
The "crap furniture" is from China and it is being dumped on the market causing 100 year old American furniture companies to layoff Americans and close plants.
Communist China has tariffs, devalues the Yuan by 40%, uses slave-labor and is intent on using economics as a weapon according to 2 of their top Generals.
I'm sure you have read harpseal's list. Tariffs are just one of the many ideas to improve our trade policies.
A agree with some of harpseal's proposals, but he's living in a dream world. As for protectionist trade policies, they exist now. We are merely arguing about degree.
But the bottom line is that the Founding Fathers saw tariffs as revenue-producers. Setting aside the national-security exception that even Adam Smith recognizes, there is no way that one can argue with a straight face that a tariff should be imposed on say, imported malted milk balls, and add that the Founding Fathers would approve of it because candy-manufacturing jobs are at stake.
As for American furniture, my experience that most of it is crap (except for Amish-made). So is Chinese, for that matter. The best furniture (price and quality), in my opinion, comes from Scandanavia and E. Europe, and maybe the Czech and Slovak Republics. Canada is in the process of giving-up the ghost.
There remains some excellent, but expensive, American furniture.