Tariffs is a meaningful way to adjust trade balance. Whether it works in specific situation is up to debate. This is similar to how U.S. uses income tax cut/rai

Tariffs is a meaningful way to adjust trade balance. Whether it works in specific situation is up to debate. This is similar to how U.S. uses income tax cut/raise to adjust economy growth and deficit, and the result is hard to predict. As far as I can see, Chinese government has been pretty successful using all kinds of economic tools to manage its growth over past 30 years. Import tariffs is one of the tools. I think it would be fair for US to have some tariffs against China to balance the trade. The real problem is such policy has not political appealing at this time. If raising tariffs help future US businesses to compete against China, since such businesses don't exist today, there is no immediate political or economical return, so it is unlikely to happen.