No the USA is admitting it won't pay its workers less than a dollar an hour. China gets away with cheap labor, so China can compete.
I wish it weren't so, but there is something about the title of this thread, "Trump Readying ... " that I find humorous.
China's labor is cheap because their productivity is high and manufactures more efficiently. If tomorrow USA introduces all-robot workers to manufacturing, USA would be paying its workers less than a yuan (I will let you figure out the exchange rate) an hour even.
In a world that is shrinking because of technology, each country must find its own way of "competing". For the time being and for some countries this will be cheap labor. The U.S. has been trying and failing to compete on labor costs by holding wages below a living wage. The U.S. must recognize that it will have to compete on a basis other than labor cost. Most, if not all, of the other industrialized nations have already recognized this necessity, and so they are doing as well as the U.S. in competitive global markets, but their people are doing better. In this respect the U.S. is failing. Later in this Century, living standards and wages in emerging economies will have risen to be roughly equivalent to those in today's fully industrialized nations. There will still be chaotic, destitute nations, of course, but perhaps fewer. Attempting to use a late 19th and early 20th Century remedy (Tariffs) for trade imbalances in the 21st Century is an absurd anachronism!
For most high tech or high skills companies like chips, auto, drugs... you need a local partner (at least when I was involved a few years back) and technology transfer to set up shop. If you tried to export to China, they imposted tariffs, e.g. on autos.
A big chunk of the US stock market bull is the success of large multinationals in international markets. Widespread tariffs will impact these firms in a large negative way unless they move significant portions of their company to other countries.
With those high-tech products, technology transfer is unavoidable no matter which country USA sets up shops in. This is why USA does not manufacture its weapons in other countries although it is concerning that USA still imports hardware used on fighter jets' system from China.
I suppose someone has to lead the way and be better off for it. Let every country compete on he basis of quality, ingenuity, usefulness, design, price and amiability.
Surely Trump is just reviving Mercantalism from the 19th century. The US is big enough to live in its own bubble and make anything it needs but at a higher cost. Smaller and poorer countries can't afford this luxury.