Trump vs Friedman or: Democracy isn’t learning

Apparently Trump is actually preparing measures to restrict free trade.
There is universal agreement among economists that restricting free trade is harmful. Since Adam Smith economists have kept pointing out that free trade is beneficial and politicians have kept putting up trade barriers.

All the nonsense Trump is spouting on the topic of international trade has been debunked by one generation of economists after another. Here is, for example, Milton Friedman:

In other words, the system of democracy is not learning but keeps repeating the same mistakes again and again.