They are not being “conflated.”

American protectionism has historically involved thinly coded appeals to racist and nationalist sentiment.

During the USA’s Japan-Bashing period of the 1980s and 1990s, this sentiment led to one of the more famous hate crimes cases in the USA: the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was murdered by 2 White Detroit autoworkers who thought he was of Japanese descent.

Today, anti-immigrant sentiment as exemplified by nationalist demagogues like CNN’s Lou Dobbs make similar anti-Latino/Mexican appeals.

Protectionism and racism sometimes overlap, but they really shouldn’t be conflated. Also, the “capitalist system” is not the culprit here, at least in the sense that it is somehow wrong and needs to be reformed in order to avoid trade dislocation. I don’t think that’s possible. I’m a free trader, so I think you take the good with the bad, and you try to do what you can to soften the blow of dislocation. You mess around with “the system” too much and everyone gets hurt, not just a few thousand rubber workers.

What is the AFL-CIO?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s18.shtml

And American Big Labor works hand in glove with Big Business to direct US worker discontent towards reactionary national politics. See the Teamsters hysteria over Mexican truck drivers entering the USA.

US Teamsters union campaigns against Mexican truckers
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aug2001/mex-a02.shtml

America’s tariffs on tires from China are thus an attempt to channel domestic economic blame onto a foreign scapegoat (in this case China)–and away from the American capitalist system itself.

America’s current anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican racism is another example of this kind of well-honed US political tactic, as was the Japan Bashing of the 1980s and early 1990s.