...laissez-faire capitalist should oppose them on principle in a perfect world, but what if a one-sided attempt at laissez-faire capitalism results in a situation where America has to compete with one arm tied behind its back -- i.e., a world in which other countries both subsidize certain industries and penalize ours?

Should we do nothing about that? Should we be okay offshoring huge chunks of our manufacturing to an adversarial and expansionist communist country? Are we good with a gutted, increasingly impoverished, blue-collar middle America? Are we a country, or simply an economy?

Or might it make sense to pay the bit more that tariffs would entail to mitigate the risks of these larger issues, perhaps even leveling the playing field for our industries overseas and eventually eliminating the need for tariffs?

There aren't easy answers here, but labeling a tariff as a just another tax is too simplistic. The pro-tariff president (Trump) was an excellent tax-cutter (by today's standards) everywhere else. It's knowing how to use the tools at your disposal that matters. He wasn't using tariffs to raise taxes (the amount raised was trivial) -- he was using them to protect American interests.