Then China has the world by the short hairs, per this logic. Nothing we can do!

There's lots we can do. We can try to encourage domestic reshoring of strategic industries, a la the bipartisan CHIPS Act and similar types of proposals. We can negotiate free trade agreements with our allies countries so that we are importing more from friendly nations than potential adversaries (our increased imports of Canadian oil, for example). We can strengthen the federal government's role in setting national industrial policy (which requires beefing up, not DOGE'ing down, its capacity) so that we have a counterweight to the industrial policy of China. We can coordinate both trade and diplomatic policy with nations around the world to try to cabin China's influence, by offering both our allies and developing nations compelling alternatives to trading with China and joining their bloc. You could spend a lot of time and resources trying to change the economy to make ourselves less dependent on trade with China so that we could actually have a good bargaining position, and then try to reform our trade with China only rather than precipitating a world wide trade offensive against every country on earth, friend or foe.

What we don't have is a magic button labelled "TARIFFS" (that most beautiful word in the English language!) that we can push to solve all these problems without having to do any work or compromise or form coalitions. That's a recipe for failure - we alienate the nations whose help we need, we reveal (very quickly) that we have no tolerance for pain in the bond markets or in our producers' supply chain, and we "declare war" against China without having done any of the work to be prepared to win that war.