Oh, Caroline

Your chart showing individual nations and deficits vs tariffs suffer a few problem.

First the countries trade, and you havenot separated out he correlated component.

Second, observation tells us the correlation is crap.
Third, these are not weighted, and the whole theory goes away when we consider the USA disobeys the rule and is 25% of the economy
Then there is the cause effect issue, nations stuck with high deficits generally try tariffs.