"Tariffs aren't always good, but they'd have to levied on high cost and capital products like machinery, cars, certain electronics, etc. This coupled with a sliding tax scale would certainly encourage firm to keep domestic production"
I work in the manufacturing sector as a machinist. There is no way that my shop can stay afloat, and use only American made tools and machines.
There are American companies, like Haas Automation, that build great American made machine tools. (I will give my right nut to anybody willing to but me a "supermini" They pail in comparison to there Japanese, and German competitors like Okuma and Mori Seiki. If we have to pay tariffs to import machines and tools, we sink. If we have to buy only American, the job would take so much longer, it would drive us out of our profit margins.
What counts as imported by the way? It was an order from Toyota that restarted the mill after that shutdown they had. Government Motors newest car they seem so proud of ("the Chevy Cruise" is Korean designed, Mexican built. Do you have to pay a tariff on it? Is a foreign build GM product an American car?