Classic journalist overthinking it all to hell and back and ascribing logic because they can’t gear down to moron level.
The policy came from a fictional expert (Ron Vara), by way of a Peter Navarro, into a Jared Kushner, into a Trump, then Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Jamieson Greer and Russell Vought took it and mixed in some bastardised economics Professor Brent Neiman figures that they got TOTALLY wrong, and then they asked ChatGPT to spit them out a tariff policy.
The info they fed ChatGPT was wrong, the answer it gave them was nonsensical. No one thought to basic math, fact or economics check it, and then Trump made it international economic policy, and broke the global trade economic order into smithereens and mayhem.
Now a market crash, a trade war and a global recession will ensue. Simple, as, that.