Reputational damage? I see it exactly the opposite, having been doing the import/export thing since 1999. The US has been accepting the short end of trade agreements for decades. Sometimes for the sake of "soft power", and sometimes to allow developing countries room to grow. But even the developed countries have been taking advantage of the US, while laughing all the way to the bank. That was the real reputational damage that Trump's trying to put the brakes on. Besides, how long can a country buy over half a $trillion more than we sell every year? Do you think that has something to do with that $40T budget deficit? If that means that trinkets at the Pottery Barn and big screens cost more, maybe Americans will buy fewer disposable trinkets and settle for their 65" big screen instead of upgrading to the 85" because they think they need it. Look up some of the Canadian quotas on (for example) dairy products, and how those affect the tariffs on US dairy. And there's thousands of other examples in the thousands of pages of HTS codes of each country. Not Canada, but why do you figure there's so few Corvettes and F150's in Thailand? Unequal tariffs. That's why. Same thing...
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