> I think that Trump’s approach, while more theoretically valid than it is being given credit for, is the wrong one.

I disagree that Trumps approach is "theoretically valid". So do 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists and the entire stock market.

> These tariffs, however, are much more complicated, because they exist (for now anyways), while a war does not.

I think the author means to imply that the tariffs will be short lived here. However, I initially misread it to mean that a war was coming, and found it to be prescient. Republicans lost the house/senate for 50 years the last time they tried tariffs. It's going to take a pretty large distraction to keep the retirees from noticing that cat food doesn't taste as good as it used to.