"if cheap goods from a foreign country hurt us then free goods should hurt us the most. "

this is what logically follows from tariff logic.

cheap goods from another country emerge because a country fails to become more and more productive. when i see a country falling behind in their price of productivity i spend time to investigate why it is increasingly expensive to produce goods -- it's never the currency. It's always all the other things like regulations, failing health of a population, lack of cheap energy, cost of labor because living expenses are high, etc. etc..