I unironically don't think that's possible. Tariffs are the OG government policy together with taxation, in fact during multiple times in history they've been one and the same: For instance, in the early decades of the US government the source of almost all its revenues were the tariffs levied on the merchandise that entered its ports, notably those of New York, Boston and New Orleans.
Without getting into the weeds of the motivations of the current American administration, in the modern age a government puts up tariffs when it wants to protect its local economic sectors from foreign competition. This can be a good thing or a bad thing: For good examples, see the governments of East Asia from the 1950s onwards, which strategically closed off their markets to foreign products in key sectors like the automobile and electronics, in which they saw massive growth potential but also realised their national industries were woefully behind the West in quality and costs. If foreign products had been allowed in, the local players would have been driven towards bankruptcy, but by promoting internal competition and strong government mandates to improve they eventually developed world-class industries that ate everyone else's lunch in export markets.
For bad examples, see post-WW2 British industry. British firms grew complacent in the captive markets the Empire's walled garden provided, producing subpar work for disproportionate costs. Then as the Empire disintegrated those markets slipped away when they opened their trade to more competitive players.
Another reason to enact tariffs is when you suspect a foreign competitor is playing foul and selling products below cost in your country in order to bankrupt your local industries, corner your market, then drive prices upwards. For example, the EU recently put extra tariffs on Chinese EVs after they determined the national and local governments over there were giving undue advantages to their manufacturers (free land, subsidised loans, electricity below market rate, etc.)
As for the American tariffs to Mexico and Canada... I'd say they're partially an effort to re-shore industries that left for those countries, but a good chunk of them is purely to extract political concessions in other areas, and for the inherent antipathy most of Trump's base has towards Canada and Mexico. That's why he's immediately frozen them after Trudeau and Sheinbaum agreed to a couple of concessions regarding the borders, I genuinely believe he just wanted to put on a show of force on those countries because it plays well with R voters.
What I will say though is that if the US government finally goes through with the tariffs, they will be antithetical to the anti-inflation platform it was elected on. Tariffs are ALWAYS an inflationary policy, they increase costs for importers that get passed on to consumers, and they put pressure on the labour market because new workers are needed for the industrial growth they aim to create, driving labour costs upwards too. They are a bet that after the initial inflationary shock said industries will be competitive enough for prices to stabilise, but it's a bet that can go very wrong.
the issue is that the U.S. has restrictions against importing goods made with slave labor, and without checking the goods it was allowing places like Temu and Shein to sell goods made by Uyghur slaves in Xinjiang.
TBH everyone looks the other way when those goods are crucial enough. Did you know that close to a majority of the world's polysilicon used to make solar panels is refined in Xinjiang?
State sponsored forced labour is endemic to China’s Xinjiang, where labour transfer schemes and the use of conscripted and prison labour take place within an environment of extreme surveillance and coercion against Uyghurs and other minority groups. Increasing capacity in solar production to reduce
www.csri.global
