“Free trade” has screwed this country royally. It’s a one-way proposition. Former US businesses were allowed to relocate overseas with much cheaper labor costs and then bring their products into the US sans tariffs. If you’re a US business trying to export to other countries, you know that “free trade” is a myth. Our trade representatives should be shot. Other businesses that had to stay due to excessive import transportation costs got cheap illegal labor to satiate their greed. It’s a race to the bottom with respect to global wage rates. Very few workers in this country will be able to maintain their salaries with global wage parity brought about by so-called “free trade.”
And if the US worker continues to vote people into office who create more and more regulations....more and more businesses are going to find it smart to move overseas - Especially manufacturing.
Free trade is no myth and what you are objecting too isn’t even free trade but managed trade. Tariffs are the means for politicians to seize even MORE power over our economic life something we should resist like the plague.