That won’t mean there is any merit to those dissertations. Group think is very powerful even when there are clear facts to the contrary. The relative decline of America with respect to the rest of the world is mainly due to the fact that post WWII we had almost full productivity and the rest of the world was either crushed, not developed, or some combination of the two. It was practically inevitable as the rest of the world rebuilt or industrialized that the share of world production the US had would decrease.
In fact, global trade can be a net win and was a net win. However, we could have managed things better domestically by recognizing that the laws of supply and demand don’t follow the wishes of disingenuous ideologues who maintain political power by exploiting the ignorance of the electorate.