Aren't there better ways to manage the debt than crashing trade? Print a ton of money and deliberately cause inflation, that wouldn't be as harsh as tariffs. Print the money and use it to buy foreign currency, that would weaken the dollar.
1) Debt isn't bad in itself, running a deficit isn't bad in itself. (though they can be bad in some situations!)
2) The US is in the position to "fix" the debt problem in a lot of creative ways (I mean, some pro-tariff are arguing this too, right? just that the creative way is tariffs).