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I think you’re making an assumption that the ongoing trade negotiations is static. It’s not. Today it’s parts, tomorrow it could be fully assembled goods.

If you’re going to negotiate, you don’t play all your cards at once.

I don’t think the end state of the negotiations is protectionist tariffs for the US, it’s to get China to drop their protectionist tariffs. If we reach that end goal, how is that a bad thing?

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It just seems odd to put tariffs on things that'll hurt local industries and make life harder for companies that have moved at least some production steps into your country (after lots of talk to encourage companies to do that, and apparently at least some successes doing that) over those that operate entirely outside.

> I don’t think the end state of the negotiations is protectionist tariffs for the US

We'll see, at least some of the recent tariffs seem to be exactly that, e.g. the steel and aluminium tariffs against the EU (which are now countered by the EU with tariffs on american exports) to limit their exports to the US, all the while complaining about Canada doing the same for agricultural products.

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