The desires of consumers to purchase a better or cheaper product is thwarted by politicians who want to reward domestic manufacturers with a subsidy, usually as a device to gain political support. You are forced to pay more for what you want, or make do with an overpriced and inferior product. The answer is that these anti-trade policies contribute to the breakdown of the system of division of labor that has allowed specialization and our high standard of living. If carried to the extreme, it would result in each individual having to be self-sufficient, trading with no one, and we would be thrown back into a life of primitive subsistence. Finally, tariffs, like embargoes, are a form of economic warfare.
Free trade is peaceful, tariffs are hostile.
We should conduct our foreign relations, including trade, peacefully, not with hostility and aggression. In doing so, it would only be harming itself. As trade diminishes, however, this disincentive to war is lessened. If there is any subject on which most economists agree, this is it. You cannot make a worker more valuable by passing a law.