Yes, it will cost Chinese jobs, and move manufacturing back to America. Employ more people, and raise wages and the supply of labor vs. demand of labor changes.
Y'know, it's funny how in the history of tariffs,
that has never happened.
Tariffs increase prices, which in turn reduces demand. Slapping a tariff on an import does not magically reduce any of the costs of domestic production; in fact, it gives domestic producers an excuse to
raise their prices, as long as it is still below the foreign competitors.
In order to maintain their profit margins, what will American companies do?
Automate. They won't replace Chinese factories with expensive American workers, they'll replace them with robots.
American employers won't raise wages. We're already at sub-4% U3 unemployment, with labor shortages all over, and employers won't increase wages. Employers are screaming bloody murder about minimum wage increases, and trying to automate everything they can. Heck, it seems like some companies would rather
go bankrupt rather than raise wages.
Tariffs also result in retaliation, of all sorts. China is already hitting the US with retaliatory tariffs, which means that American workers who produce goods and services for export will lose their jobs; and farmers who can't sell their produce will get hurt, and possibly lose their farms. They're already holding up goods in customs; agricultural imports, for example, sit in the docks until they are spoiled, and get sent back to the US. That's just a taste of what China will do when fighting back.
We saw most of this when the Obama administration whacked China with
tariffs on steel, from 250% to 550% in2015 -- I take it you missed that one? China spent years dumping cheap steel on the global markets, so the US steel manufacturers whined about it. (Even our #MAGA president, by the way, used that cheap Chinese steel in his construction projects.) So, the US and then EU slammed Chinese steel with stiff tariffs. What happened? First, the American steel companies raised their prices, because they knew they could charge more and still charge less than China. As a result, US construction and goods that use steel increased in cost. Were more American jobs created?
Nope. Steel is already pretty heavily automated, so they didn't need to hire thousands of workers to increase output (which, yeah, didn't increase that much). To add insult to injury, China just routed its steel exports through Vietnam to avoid the tariffs; it took a few years to catch them, too.
Similarly, the Obama administration slapped tariffs on Chinese tires in 2011. One think tank found that it saved 1200 tire jobs... and killed 4000 retail jobs. US consumers just switched to cheap Korean tires, because American-made tires were
still too expensive for most American's budgets and/or tastes. Plus, China retaliated with a tariff on chicken, which cost the poultry industry $1 billion in lost revenues.
And yes, the same people who oppose tariffs now held pretty much the same view in 2015.
Then there is the granddaddy of protectionism, the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs. When the entire planet was in the grips of the Great Depression, the US slammed everyone with import tariffs, under the assumption this would force American companies to hire. Guess what? It backfired spectacularly. Despite dire economic straits of their own, our trading partners retaliated, causing even more damage to the US and global economy. Smoot-Hawley didn't save jobs, what it did was increase prices, kill export jobs, and exacerbate the Great Depression.
So no, this is not going to work. China is not going to cave. American consumers, already stretched thin, will not patriotically pony up more dollars for domestically-produced goods. American employers, who would rather kiss a shark than increase labor costs, will not hire millions of Americans, while giving raises to millions more. The tariffs will increase costs and kill jobs. Yet again.
