They destroyed for years American jobs in doing so. Let's make things even before we decide to 'go along with them'.
American companies destroyed American jobs by fighting advancement and efficiencies.
A perfect example of this is US Steel. In the 70s, US Steel was still using 1940s-1950s technology and processes. In the late 70s and early 80s, Japan pioneered new steel engineering and process controls as well as Kaizen quality control processes. Instead of US Steel learning from the Japanese method (which they offered to share), they dug in their heels and worked to ban the processes and Japanese steel because the more efficient process meant one person could do the job of 20 American workers.
It wasn't other countries policies that were killing our industries, it was our own, almost Luddite attitude in many industries- especially those who had Union monopoly over manpower. They cared more about what they could negotiate for the next contract than they thought of helping the business protect themselves and be competitive 10 or 20 years down the road.
This same story played out in many of our industries- especially automotive.
At that, you didn't really see a resurgence in US Automotive production until those companies started moving out of Union States and into Right to Work States. That brought about the new boom of US autos in the late 90s. At that time, because those companies finally shed off Union control and adopted better practices, that's the time you started seeing Japanese and European companies leaving their own countries to build cars here.
Not because of tariffs or government interventionism- just the opposite, because the government was out of the way.
Trump right now is following the Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter models of trade. Carter was a huge proponent of tariffs using the same argument that Trump is using now. (which is why Carter has been outspoken supporting Trump's tariffs).
