| No because China will continue to devalue the Yuan like they have been, negating much of the tariff effect. The only solution, and a much "simpler" one (because it does not involve myriad scrutiny of which products to apply tariffs to and how much, etc.) is devaluation of the dollar. We've been here before, where US domestic manufacturing faced pressures as dollar was too strong. The Plaza Accord [0] involved Germany and Japan taking measures to increase their currencies against the dollar (in some ways successfully in some ways not). But it did result in a few years of dollar devaluation. A better way currently, given that there isn't the same coordination or appetite for China or others to allow their currencies to rise too much against the dollar (because they don't want to sacrifice their domestic industry) is for the federal reserve to bid for gold, at a much higher price. This will diminish the dollar and treasuries role as reserve and increase (which is already happening) gold's place as premier nuetral reserve asset (see global central banks declining purchasing of treasuries, increasing gold purchases, and decreasing $ fx reserves over the last few years). The US can either run the global reserve currency or close its trade deficit. They cannot do both [1]. Weakening the dollar and bidding up gold will solve a lot of the trade imbalances affecting the world [2] as well as devalue the massive amounts of debt overhanging the US and world economies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord [1] https://qz.com/1266044/why-does-the-us-run-a-trade-deficit-t... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/opinion/elizabeth-warren-... |