No. We’ve never had such a regulatory and corporate-taxation environment as this, especially during the time when the federal government’s primary source of revenue was tariffs on imported goods; and we certainly never had the kind of bloated welfare state we now are saddled with. Those has to come down before we can even think of raising tariffs, or else no businessmen will dare to invest in the country.
Look at New York state, attempting to attract business back in by—doing what?—offering tax breaks. Not that it’s working too well, for a myriad of other reasons, those being regulatory—and the federal government is no help either with its piling on.
And the fact is, we don't want to compete with countries like China on lack of environmental or worker safety regulations. Free trade is a race to the bottom for wages, to the bottom for environmental regulations, to the bottom for social support programs.
We don't want to go there, and the way to stop China from dragging us there, is to charge them a good tariff for admission to our consumer market.