Who said the USA wasn’t involved in trade? I asked if IYO George Washington was a conservative? A simple question you seem to have a problem answering. What’s up with that?
We could go back to an agricultural economy too if you want to live in the past. Read up on this to see why we had to move to free trade. In short, if we raise tariffs, other countries will follow suit, and destroy our economy in the process, for no good reason whatsoever.
Protectionism sucks. It’s one of the many economically ignorant planks of the Bernie Sanders platform. Like all socialism, it will make our lives poorer and more painful.
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-10/opinion/op-45497_1_free-trade
The Smoot-Hawley Bill of 1932 was the last great protective tariff the United States ever passed—and it ended in disaster. When the United States raised its tariffs in the middle of the Depression, its major trading countries raised their tariffs, too. U.S. imports fell—but so did U.S. exports. More jobs were lost, and the Depression got worse.
When we raised our tariffs in 1932, the British cheated: They raised theirs back. The result was a trade war and an economic crisis in both countries.
For 50 years, America pursued a policy of opening markets. Europe and Japan got rich—but so did we. Increased exports created millions of jobs in the United States. And imports made our lives better too. Imports keep prices down by forcing companies to compete harder to produce quality goods at reasonable prices.