>You’ve just had a “protectionist” President, US is worse off by almost every measure... as a counter example to your “protectionism is needed”
That is not a counter-example to anything AFAICT. We didn't have a 'protectionist' President. We had an incompetent President, who faked to be a protectionist.
A real data point would be this:
The US had a decent economy when we had high import duties.