Trump's tariffs against China are at least aligned with both his, and long-term America stated strategy and goals. America has tried the free trade trick with C

Trump's tariffs against China are at least aligned with both his, and long-term America stated strategy and goals. America has tried the free trade trick with China to try to compel it to towards political liberalization - it didn't work. Remember that Trump's tariffs on China from his first term were not cancelled by Biden - infact Biden added to the tariffs, in addition to enacting export restrictions. Both Bush Jr and Obama enacted limited tariffs on Chinese products. If you look at trade action against China, you can see the contours of a strategy that could maybe actually work. Obviously, tariffs cannot be the only component of such a strategy, since the disparity between Chinese and American manufacturing capability in many fields is absolutely gigantic. It took decades for China to reach their current position, there's no reason to expect that America, or the west as a whole could expect to catch up in anything less than roughly a decade scale, especially with only unpredictable tariffs. Trumps tariff plans against the rest of North America and the EU however... those fly in the very face of attempting to seriously take on China. USMCA is up for renewal in 2026. Whatever legitimate issues Trump had with Canada and Mexico, and whatever strong arm position he wanted to take, he could have messaged as a part of a prelude to the renewal. This probably would result in better outcomes for the US. The US is finding that many of their critical supply chains (including defense supply chains) are passing through China. Tariffs alone are not sufficient to disentangle these elements, and the domestic messaging from Trump simply does not create the domestic conditions for sustaining both the tariffs and whatever other policies and aid are required to enact these structural changes. It's difficult to reconcile "lower inflation", "slash the budget and deficit", "tax cuts for the rich", "tariffs", and "reindustrialize America" all at once. Randomly picking the Toyota EV battery plant that's supposed to come online this year in North Carolina - site selection was announced back in 2021. In many of these critical areas, we're talking multi-year minimal lead times to bring new capacity online.