Freedom doesn’t make a nation less competitive. But being forced to pay taxes for a military is compulsion (and necessary). We have to deal with the world as it is. GATT and so forth have reduced tariffs. Other nations have pegged their currencies to the dollar in a way that enhanced their competitiveness, put in place non-tariff barriers to entry, negotiated trade advantages, etc.
My view is that trade is analogous to military security in that nations are both competitive and cooperative based on their interests at the time. It’s a dangerous area to play with the status quo, because trade wars during economic downturns can be very ugly. If we began to protect our own manufacturers more we’d have to be very careful about implementing it. The current trade regime has been set up over the course of many decades. Modifying it will be the same if done right.
Off the top of my head, in order of importance, we would need to get our internal fiscal policy in order, put in a Freidman like monetary regime with monetary growth targets and preferably no Fed, end all immigration, lower and simplify tax rates and begin to negotiate general tariffs designed to raise revenue (and thus lower income tax and corporate tax rates — if we could eliminate corporate tax rates completely with it we’d get a double effect — corps would have more money to grow with plus some protection from foreign manufacture as they grew inside our borders).
tariffs designed to raise revenue protection from foreign manufacture
--it's only one or the other, as revenue increases come with rate cuts and protective rate hikes cut revenue;
Freidman like monetary regime with monetary growth targets and preferably no Fed
Freidman was happy with the Fed during the early '80's because cared more about fed policy than it's abolition, and the only economic policy he clearly wanted abolished was tariff protection;
end all immigration
--humans move around and all nations have always had some immigration.