It is the relative balance of supply and demand in a competitive market economy that determines the mix of employment. When exports fall or imports rise, domestic demand and relative prices have invariably adjusted in the long run to leave total employment relatively unaffected. As economists like to say, all imports are eventually paid for with exports. I also regret that, despite the remarkable success over a near half century of GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, and its successor, the World Trade Organization, in reducing trade barriers, our trade laws and negotiating practices are essentially adversarial. They presume that a trade concession extracted from us by our trading partners is to their advantage at our expense, and must be countered.
Few economists see the world that way.
If trade barriers are lowered by both parties, each clearly benefits. But if one lowers barriers and the other does not, the country that lowered barriers unilaterally would still be better off having done so. Raising barriers to achieve protectionist equality with reluctant trading partners would be neither to our benefit, nor to theirs. The best of all possible worlds for competition is for both parties to lower trade barriers. The worst is for both to keep them up.