No. Don’t do this. This is a media narrative used to strike a balanced tone because outside of the business press they don’t care about or understand the global trade economy. His first term tariffs were a disaster. We lost global market share in ag exports we will never get back. The winner of the 2017 trade war was China, and will be this time as well.
The only tariffs that benefit us, even WRT China, are the limited set of commodities and goods where we need to maintain strategic capability, like steel and heavy manufacturing. And even in those cases there are usually better ways to protect capability and American IP.
Here’s the basic fact of the matter- we control the world’s reserve currency. As long as we do, really don’t have a trade deficit with anyone, not even China. Think about this: our adversary sends us tangible goods with intrinsic value that we control demand for, and we export to them our fiat currency, which we control the supply of. And they are cheating US, you say? And you want to do something to stop THAT?
So in what sense does this accomplish anything other than weaken the market for our most important export, the dollar?