Tell that to China which routinely prohibits U.S. exports to China.
And since the American mainland has been nothing but one big open market to the world, whether they cheat or not, with massive subsidies (such as slave wages enforced by the government police state in China's case) and trade barriers...we have lost our basic industries.
Let's look at electronics for example. We used to make everything. Resistors, capacitors, transformers, circuit boards, now transistors and integrated circuits, hard drives, LCDs, flat screens, cell phones etc. We either made them first or invented these all. But now? We have had virtually all the production sucked away by the black hole gravitational pull of the artificially low wages....maintained by a heavily subsidized currency peg...keeping the yuan or the yen low. This is also the true source of the Chinese and Japanese stash of U.S. debt.
So precisely where is the U.S. "excellence" for having allowed itself to be eviscerated this way in a no-turning back sensibility to their being no level playing field?
Excellent stupidity and Excellent welfare, I suppose.
The U.S. on the same path to global has-been status as "Great" Britain.
Since we have slid backwards in industry it is time to put up selective tariffs to shelter our industry while it recovers. We also have to be energy independent by drilling here and offshore for oil and gas. There are new techniques to get the natural gas out of our shale formations. Dig up more coal to make electricity for electric automobiles which can fill some niches such as short hop vehicles and fleets
Henry Ford said that to produce wealth you have to grow it (farms), mine it or make it. Time to get back to basics and nuke all that Wall Street/Bankster stuff where they gin up bubbles and fake prosperity. Pass laws that force them to take their derivatives and their other crap to London or Dubai. Let them trade there. Get the f out parasites!