His ego likely made him think that China would just fold to his demands, because that's what this is all about, containing them, but after his first term tariffs they learnt their lesson and started preparations to protect themselves.
While the US has been spending far beyond its means, China has been building its alliances, gold holdings, and alternative payments system to avoid dollar weaponisation, and diversifying its customer base. Now Trump sits desperately waiting for the phone call that never came and likely never will.
What has he got to show for his efforts?
Lost the Canadian market.
Boeing has lost their biggest customer for now. Maybe forever. Airbus and COMAC will step in.
US farmers have lost their biggest buyer of soybeans and hormone laced beef.
US industries are struggling to find new sources of rare earth minerals.
US car production is grinding to a halt without parts. Whatever car sales they had to China is gone.
The US forcing semiconductor companies ASMC and TSMC not to sell to China has forced the Chinese to invest millions and develop their own chip industries, to the point that they have built their own chips and will soon no longer need to buy from Intel, AMD etc. Plus they will now compete against those US companies for sales.
The EU, Canada and other countries are looking at alternative arms industries for their weaponry.
The dollar is down. The markets are tanking. The US is looked at as unreliable and an authoritarian bullying State. Reputation and goodwill destroyed.
I could go on, but what's the point. Now the container ships have stopped, in a few more weeks the shelves will be empty, and he won't be able to hide it, or blame Biden any longer. Plus, there is still the threat that China could dump all its US Bond holdings.