No, tariffs are a tool of proper economic Regulation...
Understood, but you are not going to get "regulation" without a political decision to put regulation into effect - right? So at the end of the day, the world we live in is... a political decision, one way or another.
a "free market" is not the same as lack thereof [regulation, I assume?]
With no regulation whatsoever, we end up with the law of the jungle... which is the fallback position when all attempts to civilize things fail?
Real world politics is a multidimensional balance of some kind - a balance between rich/poor, strong/weak, selfish/altruistic, all kinds of dimensions.... This balance probably doesn't even have an ideal "setpoint" where everything works perfectly... there may always be give and take between the competing dimensions?