Reducing trade with China (and sure, tariffs work for that purpose, why not?) is one of the only things I agree with as far as policies Trump has actually taken action on (both terms).
... I think it'd be more effective and less painful if we weren't signaling to other liberal democracies that we're an unreliable trading & security partner at the same time, but hey, it's something.
Biden maintained the tariffs against China and many companies were moving out of China to other countries like Vietnam, India and of course Mexico. When suddenly Trump wanted to put tariffs on Mexico it took some of them off guard. Labor costs in Mexico are lower than China from what I heard. The problem has been that in many cases Chinese companies have been moving their production to those other countries. But even that could have been solved with cooperation and incentives to these countries.
Yep, exactly, you want a united front to make it effective, especially when you're dealing with an economy as large as China's. That's why it'd be nice if we were focusing mainly on that, and not also on weird low-value games with other less-abusive and more-ideologically-aligned trading partners.
... I think it'd be more effective and less painful if we weren't signaling to other liberal democracies that we're an unreliable trading & security partner at the same time, but hey, it's something.