Either you die a free man, or you live long enough to see yourself become a slave

Lol. I think we've had this conversation. I can appreciate the ideal, it's one that I subscribe to. But I see it in arenas. On the international stage, we would be the only ones playing by those rules. That's why the labor market's share in the has taken a nose dive since the 90's.

Economies are meant to be circular. Ours is a syphon. On the macro level, we live under a global communist control with the nation they are trying to bring down is the US. The idea is to siphon the wealth from the US to the rest of the world. It doesn't play out like that and only enriches those that are able to take advantage of the arbitrage in labor.

We do it all under Fair Trade, but it's a misnomer. We've all but given up our sovereignty by outsourcing the vast majority of our manufacturing. The only way to get it back, (and with it the middle class) is to even the playing field. We do that by evening the trade deficits. Tariffs are a tool to even the trade deficit and by doing so, they protect our industries from collapse and job loss. Those protections are needed for national security. It's that simple.

Labor doesn't have the opportunity to just move internationally to where the work is. Without tariffs, we are stranding our own people in an economic desert. That's exactly why real wages haven't moved since 2001.