And it would quickly be destroyed by competing governments that don’t believe in free markets and actively subsidize their industries to capture market share.
I forgot to put in my comment "until recently". And the US auto industry does such so using that as your argument in favor of tariffs doesn't really work.
You and your downvote brigade can continue to hit my posts but it won’t change the fact the US has been subsidizing our agriculture sectors and oil and gas to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars for a LONG time.
Anyone claiming the US is a completely free market is either uninformed or a delusional nationalist.
Can you give an example of a zero tariff country being destroyed by a super high tariff country? I can give you examples of the opposite. For example Argentina tried to build up domestic industries with high tariffs.