Tariffs, as with taxes, may serve positive, market-favourable functions, particularly in addressing market failures, uneven regulation (e.g., higher pension, safety, environmental, and/or medical-care burdens in the importing country), as well as anti-dumping or anti-interference actions. British-Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang writes of this, particularly in Kicking Away the Ladder:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang#Kicking_Away_the...>

Recent US tariffs fall rather short on most of these points, of course.

And it would quickly be destroyed by competing governments that don’t believe in free markets and actively subsidize their industries to capture market share.