The nationalists like to pretend they support free markets, but fail to understand two key details:
International trade is not fundamentally different from any other form of regional specialization.
You can't demand more US manufacturing until you remove barriers to US entrepreneurial activity.
Trump obsessed with trade deficit, but it's one of the few things allowing spendthrift US administrations to inflate the money supply as much as it does. Overseas demand for dollars soaks up some of that excess.
Trump is not really addressing the spending deficit, reducing regulatory burdens on small businesses, or fighting to curb the insane intellectual property laws which allow megacorporations to more innovation with legal expenses.
The fiscal mess in the US has been accumulating for over a century, and few in Trump's circle have the inclination or incentive to address those root problems. Instead, they add new regulatory burdens on the form of tariffs without any consideration for US manufacturing needed to replace imported goods. Want to bet their answer will be subsidies at taxpayer expense? Meanwhile, megacorporations will likely see increased profits as any rising prices can be hand-waved away as "tariffs caused it!"
Oh, yeah, and Trump started the COVID lockdowns that killed small businesses starting 5 years ago.
Relevant podcast on the twin deficits, fiscal policy, inflation, debt, etc. https://mises.org/podcasts/minor-issues/twin-deficits
I don't know about the fiscal mess brewing over a century, but certainly since the end of WWII.
Before that, I could see that Bretton Woods made an error in pegging the dollar to a fixed price of gold, knowing they would inflate the dollar.
Woodrow Wilson still beats the print of the blame for creating the Federal Reserve system and the income tax. After WW1, the Roaring 20s seemes like a success, but it built a bubble that burst into the Great Depression.
Then FDR stole gold from the people and subsequently devalued the dollar in gold terms. People believe WW2 somehow fixed that, but in real terms, we didn't return to prosperity until after the war when the economy finally started producing for the benefit of the consumer.
Inflation was kept somewhat in check, but government grows like a cancer, and by 1965, almost all silver had to be removed from coins. That was a warning the dollar had been destroyed already behind the scenes. And then finally Nixon closed gold redemption for overseas holders of gold. The petrodollar was eventually a stopgap, but almost all restraint on inflation was gone.
They've been building a new bubble for 60 years, and trying to patch every correction along the way with more stimulus and more inflation. It can't last.
This is something I don't understand. There should be a trade deficit with some countries, because they are selling something the US needs, but they don't need that much from the US. The trade deficit conversation makes no sense. It is like me going to the shop and buying bread and milk, and then demanding that the shop buys something from me for equal value.
And this deficit is what made America the power it is today, by creating itself as the largest single market. It did it on debt to gain power, but the cycle is very painful to reverse, because everyone is accustomed to consuming so much more than they need.
Bailouts catalysed Bitcoin -perhaps the next round will see it used properly.
The trade deficit didn't exist as a pervasive thing until the 1970s, coincidentally the same time the US completely abandoned all pretense of adhering to the Bretton Woods system and Nixon closed the gold window. The US was an industrial powerhouse with plenty of extorts and trade without a deficit, and there was growing prosperity for all economic classes with less wealth concentration. Trade deficits and spending deficits are not essential to prosperity at all.