Since the House Passed "fast track" for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), with significant Democratic Party support, it only seems appropriate to have another look at the whole globalization issue to determine the best alternatives to "free trade." Globalization isn't a policy, it's a stage of late capitalism. Bearing this in mind it becomes clear that trying to return to a status quo ante, a time when a vibrant, tariff protected manufacturing base flourished in the US employing one in three non-farm, payroll employees in high wage jobs, is quite impossible. Once the globalization genie is out of the bottle it is impossible to return to the old days of industrial protection. Sure tariffs worked at one time but they will have the reverse effect today costing jobs instead of protecting and creating them. This is mostly because tariffs in today's globally restructured economy will only add to existing overcapacity, cost jobs by raising costs for industries that rely heavily on imported raw and semi-processed inputs (like steel), lock out imports of finished goods with heavy US content thus costing jobs in the industries that provide that content and finally, raise prices of consumer goods effectively reducing the real income of America's middle class. And this doesn't even consider the possibility of retaliation by foreign trade partners.
Tariffs allowed the US to become an industrial power in the first place. This much is true. But reinstating them will not allow the US, or any other highly globalized economy, to return to the old days of industrial autarchy any more than the Luddism of early nineteenth century England allowed a reversal of the industrial revolution and a return to a former pastoral society with only small handicraft shops instead of large scale factories. Globalization, with its hyper-mobile capital and transnational supply chains, is here to stay. So are we doomed to high chronic levels of unemployment unless we pay workers three bucks an hour? No! There are many better solutions than tariffs or value added taxes to reestablishing high paying employment in the US, including manufacturing employment. But first we need to move beyond the wrong heading thinking that this all a matter of trade policy.