Fairly sure you're wrong on this, the US now wants an advantageous relationship. Not an even score.
Just returning to even ground would let China keep the advantages it has reaped.
I expect that the tariffs will stay in place permanently because any acceptable deal would require the Chinese publicly harassing their own people on behalf of the US government, and there is no way the US could enforce that. So the easiest solution are tariffs that will rebalance trade naturally, and probably the world polarizing into two main economic zones, US-centric and China-centric. And then we all just try not to kill each other for the forseeable future.
The thing that really annoys me about this is that if China would just be patient and play by the rules, be genuinely friendly to its neighbors, it would take them like 20 or 30 years longer but then the whole world would just place the crown on their head and they would peacefully become the world's only superpower. Naturally, maybe even justly. Now we all get misery because of impatience.
just playing the devils advocate but, couldn’t the same have be said about the us (e.g imf, world bank, regime change wars etc)?
China is an economic threat because it will inevitably be superior to the US economy. India is an economic threat for the same reason.