Om, 'Free trade' made more sense back in Reagan's time since the US still had the bulk of its industrial base. Usually the entity favoring free trade is the world's dominant industrial power, while the tariff approach is used by less advanced countries aspiring to build up an industrial base. Back in the 1800s, the British Empire was the most advanced industrial power, so they were the 'free trade' advocates, while the US and Germany went the tariff route to protect their nascent industrialization. In those days the tariff approach was called the "American System', and it enabled the rapid industrialization we saw in the US. Bismark of Germany copied the American system, and had an even more rapid industrialization. So Trump's tariff approach actually has some strong historical underpinings, and he's following the ideas given to him by Robert Lighthizer.
But the rise of multinational corporations changed the dynamics, and their push for 'free trade' in the 1980s and 90s was to enable them to move their plants overseas where labor was dirt cheap, no unions, etc, and then bring back the manufactured goods into the US without any import tariffs. So a great deal for the corporations, but the US lost its industrial base and the US middle class shrank as the high paying jobs factory were gone. So a different paradigm compared to the 1800s, and it led to most manufacturing leaving the country, even while the US manufacturing companies reaped the huge benefits.
Fast forward, and the move now is toward de-globablization of manufacturing, and countries becoming self sufficient. China became a huge US rival and started muscling in on US dominance, the US is up to its eyeballs in debt, China got BRICS going, which is a huge existential threat to the US, and then came Covid, which showed how vulnerable the world's supply chains had gotten after decades of globalization. Etc, etc, 'and so it goes'..
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