Protectionism (and it's brother isolationism) is the cause of war.
But you slight me when you think I am biased because of who I currently work with. No. I've farmed a very large portion of my life, and farmed commodities as well for part of that time. Most of the time I farmed vegetables. Since this is an Ag related site, I can speak my mind on this from that stand point.
Protectionism creates retaliation. The American farmer feeds the world in many respects. We depend upon foreign markets and free trade to sell our products abroad. When we create tariffs and laws and a system, in general that causes other countries to retaliate by taxing and blocking our product in other countries, we loose American farms and jobs. And if another country/or countries retaliate strong enough, it ends in the loss of American life. It also hurts other countries whose citizens depend on our products to be fed and clothed. Protectionism has ruined American Agriculture whenever we start to practice it. The USA cannot absorb the total amount of our production capacity of our Agriculture system. Yes, we have to compete with other countries, but we KNOW that free enterprise is not truly free unless we have competition. Yes, things like NAFTA hurt us in the short term in farms, but we adapted and realigned. I was hurt on a big crop of vegetables because Argentina was "dumping" on the US market. But Argentina got hurt and the US market rebounded next year because Argentina got hurt badly too and didn't try to dump the next year.
And if you are ok with inflation, then protectionism is your answer. But if you don't like to see greedy US companies keep getting greedier and taking huge windfall profits and overcharging consumers, while quality goes down the toilet and you experience "shrinkflation" then open trade up and allow free enterprise by everybody.
People who often spout protectionism under sell the American spirit and know how. Because they don't think US products and companies can compete with off shore stuff? Well, they can. No one "wants to". And everyone will complain and make trips to congress. The best way to survive is to get off their duffs and get competitive. It can and has been done. Retool, rethink, re organize. I guess you may not remember the absolute crap show the US automobile market was in during the 70's and 80's. Quality was in the crapper. And the Japanese came out with super reliable cars. People would get harrassed even though if they bought one though initially and ever were called "traitors". There was a strong protectionism spirit? What happened? People stopped buying US JUNK and went to other brands. Once detroit saw that, they got busy and started changing their ways...and in turn the Japanese saw the US market as such a gold mine, they opened up plants in the US added jobs and the pie got bigger for everyone.