Comment by AngryData

I agree that we do need robustness in our production and economies, and a lot of it. But I don't really believe that most tariffs, especially current ones, will ensure that in any way.

Generally if you want stable and reliable local production of something, you subsidize that production or industry. You guarantee a certain amount of product will be bought/paid for even if a foreign supplier can or is willing to undercut that cost. That is why we have a large agricultural surplus in basically every western country, subsidized crops means there is money on the table for somebody to be in that industry which ensures surplus production even when other places are offering cheap food to trade.

Those can also be misapplied and corrupted, but it is still better than nothing at all or not extremely well planned and implemented tariffs which can sometimes hurt local production of other things still.