I don't think it's at odds with other explanations. If you wanted a working tariff regime you'd make the tariffs graduated and reasonable - big enough to sway customer choices and ithus investment decisions, but not arbitrary seeming. More importantly, you'd work hard to ensure it rolled out smoothly and minimized commercial disruption so as to allow your price signals to function clearly.

If you wanted a working tariff regime, you'd also couple tariffs with investments and tax incentives for domestic businesses. Just hoping that the market will (somehow!) sort it out is a recipe for failure, quite possibly of disastrous levels.