No, it wasn't parody. I was just pointing out that those who are freaking out about U.S. protectionist policy and how it's "unfair" with respect to China don't seem to understand that they have their own protectionist policies, and similar arguments used as negatives about the U.S. market are used as positives when describing the Chinese market, such as the references about local supply chains, or how Tesla had to set up its factory in China or else not be able to ship cars to China (among other, economic factors to bring costs down which again just prove the need for the US to tariff imported automobiles too in order to lower costs).

This is really rather obvious and simple in the public sphere, though certainly trade policy is extremely complex.

Liberals and the Democratic Party are continuing to lose economic arguments and elections because they fail to understand these double standards that many millions of Americans clearly understand, even if they don't understand the complexities of trade policy that underpin these arguments.

China needs to fully open its markets, or perhaps we should do what we can to stop trading with them and influence others to do the same.

Protectionist policies like these matter a little less with small countries, but with a country with the economic power of China they matter quite a bit. If China doesn't open its markets, and they won't, that will be the precise cause of the demise of bulk of the world's free trade schemes. It's untenable for other nations to lose their manufacturing capacity while also not being able to compete fairly in Chinese markets. This ranges from their forcing of joint ventures, to banning of American social media and technology companies, to measures they take to depress their currency to keep their exports artificially cheap. Certainly other countries engage in these practices, but the scale of China's economy doing so is again untenable. I'd argue that it would be great if we could all lower trade barriers, but unless China does there's no reason for the United States to do so any longer either except where it can negotiate specific deals that are hopefully mutually beneficial.

To put it simply, yes absolutely the United States, as does the European Union, have tariffs, various rules on imports, and other mechanisms that restrict free trade. China does too. If we aren't going to have "free trade" or head toward more free trade together, I'm not interested in complaints about the United States restricting trade in other ways like placing tariffs on imports or removing the de minimus exemption. Everyone is restricting trade to their advantage, we're just doing it too or in new ways, which others will do as well and so on. If you are clutching your pearls about it, you've lost the argument. If you are complaining about the United States doing it but not other countries including the EU or China, you've also lost the argument.

I don't really follow your comments about New Zealand in the context of this conversation, but certainly an interesting anecdote!