The trouble with that is, if youre going to go into a field that does need it regularly, theres a decent chance youre going to need it because you need math for which trig is like, foundational to the foundations of the thing you actually need. It would be a fair bit of a slowdown to go teach such basic things to all the engineers and scientists and whoever else may need such things before teaching them the math that builds on it, and you both do need those professions in a modern society and dont know in advance which kids will ultimately end up in them.

Also, abstract? It seems to me that, being generally related to and derived from geometry, trig is one of the less abstract bits of math, simply because you can draw out the circles and triangles and waveforms and relatively clearly see what the concepts represent and how they relate to eachother, rather than just writing out a sequence of symbols and remembering what to do with them all. If it takes hardcore drilling to stick around, thats in my view more a case of it being taught in an ineffective manner that prioritizes brute force memorization over actual learning.