Just random observations.

1. In terms of "globalization" and economic debates almost nobody brings up thar the post-WWII "glory days" were never going to be permanent. It was a temporary situation of the US being "last man standing." Everyone else was FUBAR to some degree or another as the war happened on their turf, and the Soviet Bloc & China essentially "withdrew from the game." And the Third-World was far, far, more "Third-World'y" than it is today.

That's not to say the US government hasn't done plenty of stuff that's been asshat pants-on-head stupid, or downright harmful/evil that's impacted the well being of Americans in terms of economic & trade, because of course they have. That's what governments do best. But in broad strokes, what's happened, and is happening, was and is inevitable.

If you hold to ideas like "everyone in the world is just a little American waiting to get out..." Or think overall that representational democracy & free-market capitalism is better & right, then you've got to goddamned let them do it. That doesn't mean some shitheads in D.C. should be selling the family farm for some magic beans either though.

2. You, the consumer, the little guy... always pays, always.

Most here understand that corporate taxes just get passed along in the price of everything, eventually winding up coming out of the wallet paying for goods and services by the end-consumer. And the costs aren't just the taxes, some is all the tax attorneys, accountants, and bookkeeping required too.

Protectionist trade practices are no different, no matter what form they take.

You and I pay for it. Tariffs, or other policies that try to force or keep industry in-house & onshore just create costs that are passed along to you and I. Whether it's the direct cost of the tariff on the product, and the retaliatory tariffs the other countries impose hurt whatever you are exporting, messing up income and domestic jobs. The other countries never sit still and just take the hit on our tariffs. What are we going to do, say we'll nuke them?

This is an unwinnable game. It's so bad, most people don't know or understand that the Great Depression was so long and so deep because everyone in the world responded by "circling the wagons" with protectionist economic & trade policy.

And yes, It absolutely sucks if key stuff for the Industrial base, economy & consumer goods all go overseas and it suddenly stops. A war, revolution, natural disaster, whatever... but the alternatives just push you further and further into a planned economy. And those always work out great, right?

3. There's definitely an issue with "tsunamis of cheap rubber dogshit at Walmart" but like tariffs & protectionisim, it's another "cure is far worse than the disease" situation.

If one has an older house from the 1940s & earlier, or just been in one, even a nicer upper class one, you'll notice how tiny stuff like closets in bedrooms were. Because yes, people bought less clothes and hung onto them a lot longer, and it was much like that for almost everything else.

And the rise of "modern consumables. (TV, electronic media, massive Darwinistic evolution in marketing/advertising...) with its inherent push to overseas rubber dogshitify everything, arguably does siphon off money people might put elsewhere, like savings or make more leaps into actual appreciating assets, than spending it on depreciating assets/consumables.

But, there's a big flip-side to this. If you're poor, then the choice for something you pretty much can't avoid absolutely needing, like pots & pans so you can actually cook, or whatever else that's not a unimportant trinket, your choice may be the rubber dogshit version or nothing.

Inevitably, someone will immediately suggest the poor person should "be frugal" and "swallow their pride" and buy second hand pots & pans from a yard sale or a thrift store, rather than the rubber dogshitty ones at Walmart. That's okay, and not "wrong" per-se. But what such advice fails to understand is that if everybody tried that in some theoretical rubber dogshit-free America, it's that flood of rubber dogshit which made the used pots & pans, good USA-made or dogshit ones, available at the yard sale or Goodwill store in the first place.

Supply/demand/price curves never-ever go away. Even for used pots & pans. Without the supply of cheap rubber dogshit pans from China or wherever, the used pan supply in Goodwill will be far smaller, and/or the prices far higher, and the poor person that needed pans is still screwed.

And "striking a balance" with government regulation isn't going to work well, probably not at all, and even if it could, we're shuffling in the direction of planned economy again.

And if you've got some counter-argument about some specific circumstance or industry that bothers you, if we disassemble the argument piece by piece, at the bottom of it all is no different than some Reddit coffe-shop-communist stating: "Obviously, capitalism has failed here..." when inevitably, it's the government meddling that caused the problem, or created a circumstance where one particular "capitalist" entity could take unfair advantage of the situation.