IMHO, Trump's idea on tariffs and China is not really about trade, free trade, or economics. Instead, Trump's ideas go back to some simpler stuff -- predatory marketing to achieve and then exploit a monopoly. So, run losses, drive competitors out of business, then take all the market, have a monopoly, and raise prices. Also for China, much of the goal is international power.

China is like the guy who promised to catch the wild pig. So each day he took a walk in the woods and left a trail of corn. Soon the pig found the corn and started following the corn trail. Slowly the corn trail led to a corral with an open gate. So, sure, as soon as the pig was inside the corral, the guy closed the gate. Done. One pig captured.

China doesn't want trade or free trade; instead, China wants to use "the old take over the world ploy". So, China will try to reduce everyone else to colonies supplying goods, especially from agriculture, at low prices while they import products from China at high prices. That idea used to be called mercantilism, e.g., what England did to India.

The Chinese Communist party is willing to have their citizens work however long at whatever work to support their "old take over the world ploy".

For the US, the situation is easy: Slap on tariffs.

The US tariffs will also be good for the Chinese people -- have the Communist party keep the Chinese people busy making consumer products, concentrating on education, a nicer country, etc.

China is a big country with lots of land area near by -- Mongolia, Russia, India, SE Asia, Australia, etc., and doesn't much need to import anything and needs next to nothing from the US.

Similarly the US needs next to nothing from China.

The US tariffs will also be good for the US, e.g., put many millions of US citizens back to work. In many ways, the US standard of living was much higher in 1950 when foreign trade was not very important for the US.

Besides, just why should the work output of US workers be shipped out of the US? Really, only if that output can be swapped for something more valuable to the US, e.g., products we need and don't have, e.g., tin, natural rubber, teak, but there isn't a lot of such products the US really needs. Okay, we could sell the output for gold, sell the gold to the US government, and let the gold accumulate in Fort Knox. To what end? Fort Knox is awash in gold.

I know; I know; I know: The big plan was that poorly paid US workers would give their jobs to China, India, Pakistan, etc. and, then, get much better jobs at Microsoft selling software at high prices to China, India, Pakistan, etc. Well, mostly it didn't work: Instead the textile workers in the Carolinas are still out of work; same for the steel workers in the Rust Belt, etc.

Why? Some US foreign policy thinkers thought that such trade would make a more peaceful world. The people doing the importing liked making the money. Pakistan liked getting US help setting up a textile industry and selling back to the US to get cash to buy, say, oil or stuff to make their atomic bombs. Bummer.

Trump is correct: China has devastated large areas of the US fly-over states. The whole show, from Nixon's trip to China to China in the WTO to the present has been a disaster in nearly every sense for the US.