> You can, actually, especially if you aren't the president of that country, and I'm fairly confident none of us are.
Following your logic: It would have been OK for morally bankrupt administrators of Nazi concentration camps to criticize what administrators of Gulag were doing.
> Whataboutism
Another word/concept used by the west to preempt/fight criticism of its crimes from the east. It is perfidious, but after one learns about it, it is transpicuous.
> China was the topic that Simulacra was writing about.
Simulacra was writing about China in the context of "human rights issues" (exact these word used). OP even asks "do these tariffs have any chance of improving China's behavior". ("behavior" being human rights behavior).
To close this thing off (I simply don't care for the USA or the west as a whole to criticize them at length from the perspective of wishing them get better)... I find it interesting that neither you nor anyone else who has responded to my comment has said anything about the core of it: The hegemon USA commits heinous crimes by itself and indirectly through its allies; until it stops doing it and does something to at least a bit mitigate the effects of the disastrous imperial politics it leads for hundreds of years it has no moral authority to criticize anyone who commits much less heinous crimes.
This evasion of the core issue is the reason why the west and its allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia) are so hated and despised as it shows your unwillingness to be a good "citizen" of this Planet. You want to conquer, to subjugate, to enslave everyone.
It is no wonder why people in the rest of the world speak of three cities of evil: Vatican, London and Fashington. For they are responsible for millions upon millions of liters of human blood spilled, for millions maimed and abused human beings, for millions of slaves. (other western empires are not far behind: Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy)