What China does is currency manipulation to boost exports. So yes, it's a smart economic policy but this isn't sustainable or fair, which alienates trade partners, resulting in effective tariffs. Everyone imposes tariffs on China. The EU impses 62% tariffs on China electric bikes: https://restofworld.org/2024/china-tech-tariffs-which-countries-will-impose/

As Reuters outlines, tariffs are leading many companies to reshore to the US which was the original reason for them: https://www.reuters.com/business/companies-eye-us-expansion-lessen-fallout-potential-tariffs-2025-01-29/

Tariffs are not a stupid economic policy. Wikipedia provides the list of the average tariffs per country. Almost all countries on earth use them to protect their domestic industries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_rate

When the Polish economy opened to the world, it lost 12% in GDP as a result of factory closing due to a lack of productivity compared to Asian factories:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6016/c6016.pdf

Yes, the US is alienating its allies but that may result in the end in a much stronger country. Imagine Trump does actually seize Greenland and Canada?

RIP everybody else.

What bothers me is that Trump's doing aren't studied from an empirical perspective but from an ideological one. Orange man bad so whatever orange man says or does is bad too.

This is a very stupid way to look at the world. Yes the character is grotesque and rude, but that doesn't mean anything about his actions.