[supernovae]

If emerging markets are where growth & recovery is at, the US certainly won't compete there through protectionism. This isolationist approach to trade is just that... You can't have many 20B+ dollar companies if they're the only market is the US and it's saturated and we simply don't have the manufacturing capability at their expected cost and margin

[Retric]

Having multi billion dollar companies is only so useful when significant portions of production, sales, and stock ownership is outside the US.

Protectionism is theoretically a bad idea, but GDP is not the only measure of economies. Being largely self sufficient for example has real strategic advantages. In that context low tariffs (sub 10%) are not always a bad idea.