We're getting better at trade wars than in the beginning.

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 83.

The last full year of Thomas Jefferson’s second term, 1808, found William Bainbridge in Portland, Maine, assigned to oversee the building of gunboats and enforce a series of wildly unpopular measures that the president and the Republicans thought would force Britain to recognize American rights. Jefferson remained convinced that America possessed a powerful weapon in economic coercion; limiting or banning America’s oceangoing trade would deliver British concessions without recourse to war.

John Randolph offered up his usual scorn. Supporters of trade restrictions, he said, wanted “to cure the corns by cutting off the toes.” Subsequent events only seemed to confirm his cynicism. American exports and re-exports, which had reached $108 million in 1807, plummeted to $22 million in 1808 after Jefferson’s embargo of all American oceangoing trade with Europe or European colonies went into effect. A few towns were especially hard hit; a fifth of the residents of Salem were said to be reduced to beggary and the pastor of the town’s East Church, Dr. William Bentley, noted in his diary that more than a thousand of the town’s citizens were being fed each day at a soup kitchen supported by public subscription.