I remember the anti-WTO protests and the peripheral movements that sprung out of that like No Logo, and the sneering directed at the anti-globalism protesters from people like Paul Krugman, who swore that the Great Depression was caused by Smoot Hawley and insisted there would be massive gains from trade.
Later, he fessed up and said that was another Noble Lie. There has been a lot of lying in the history of the economics profession, unfortunately, all for the greater good, I'm sure.
When these tariffs hit, I also expected broad price increases as well as a recession, when this didn't happen, I began to reassess some things.
In retrospect, I think that the massive expansion of investor rights in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the Clinton era agreements, was not really about trade at all, but about power -- e.g. getting the rest of the world to adopt legislation and reforms that would enable foreign investment/outsourcing.
I don't think the American consumer benefitted a whole lot, nor the American worker, from this movement.
I also don't think the rest of the world benefitted, apart from East Asia, but the East Asian countries famously industrialized not by pursuing unfettered trade, but by pursuing an export-led growth model with limit controls on capital inflows. E.g. they restricted trade by restricting foreign investment, the exact opposite of the WTO consensus.
Part of the reason I don't think trade was all that important, and what is important to the western consensus is investor rights and subordination of national policies is that the US has no problem levying sanctions on a large part of the world, and when these sanctions are levied, you hear barely a peep coming from the press or from economists about these sanctions.
Likewise, the EU just imposed massive sanctions on Russia, generally with the broad support of their think tanks and economic experts.
So I think trade in general is just a lot less important than we have been told. The real prize were the investor rights agreements and agreeing with western geopolitical goals.
I mentioned this to a friend who was bemoaning the terrible human rights situation in Iran, and I pointed out the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, and said the moment KSA directly challenges western power in the same way Iran has, you will start hearing all sorts of complaints about human rights in Saudi Arabia.
It's not about human rights either. Just like it's not about trade.
I think these types of situations are a real test of character for the experts. It should be an eye opening moment for a lot of people.