Not correct. This country was built on productivity and trade, but not "free trade" (especially not as "free trade" is used of late).
Tariffs and duties funded the government when it was still within its Constitutional restraints. There was none of the interference from NGOs and little from government regulators, that American businesses and workers endure today. Globalists today shun the idea of tariffs, in favor of over-taxing the productivity of American workers and further stifle homegrown ingenuity and effort with burdomsome regulation and outright prohibition.
The economic view of globalism and "free trade" is myopic because it ignores the second basic rule of Economics: "Second effects count."
Displacing employed Americans with offshore or imported labor will reduce the cost of production, but those savings will be more than offset by the lingering damage to the national economy. Any beginning economics student would be able to list the benefits and detriments of offshore and imported labor, taking into account the decline of exported manufactured goods and extracted natural resources, and trade deficits of goods and services, and would be able to project the likely resulting trends. The conclusion would be, IMO, that America is within a decade of third-world deprivation and/or a full-scale civil war.
The people making their short-term millions now had better plan for their retirement somewhere else, because America is not going to be a pretty place to live.