I'm not an economist, but I think the theory has merit. I don't think the execution does, if only because we almost certainly only have 4 years until the tariffs are mostly reversed. The complete lack of long-term planning is a major failure of out political system compared to places like China.

If I were Trump, I instead would have pushed congress to take away the power of tariffs back from the presidency and make something like the Fed to manage them instead, with some checks added in. I normally don't like unelected officials making policy like that but in this case I don't see what else would work. As we've seen, broad tariffs are very unpopular even if they might be necessary, and we'd need them to have the potential to stick around much longer for them to be effective.

That said, I'm willing to bet this will finally put the nail in the inflation coffin. Taking money away from consumers and "burning it" by returning it to the government is the best way to deal with inflation.