We're already in a tariff war with China. It started roughly four decades ago and has been incredibly one-sided for almost the entirety of that span. The US didn't really fight back until about 6 years ago.
I don't know that our actions made us "poorer." Taking a look at inflation as one metric, after the implementation of tariffs, inflation wavered down a bit in 2018, up a bit in 2019, and down a bit in 2020. It didn't make a noticeable increase until 2021, in the aftermath of the pandemic and all of the supply chain challenges it created.
But tariffs aren't the only problem with trade with China. Almost all industry in China is either state-owned or state-controlled, and all of it is state-subsidized. So, even if they placed zero tariff on, say, a laptop computer import manufactured by Dell or HP, they'll still subsidize state-controlled Lenovo to the point that it's the cheapest option for Chinese consumers, no matter WHAT the cost.
