I'd venture to say that our income tax system also picks winners and losers. Right now, if you are rich, you can abscomb with not only the federal tax-support for a Tesla car, but also the tax credit on your own 1140. Does that actually seem like picking a winner and loser? you are only portraying one side of this equation. What about the increased competitiveness for the American product, the US-based sales taxes paid on it, the payroll increase, the tariff revenue which comes about? If tariffs are properly utilized, not just some indiscriminate whim, but targeted for specific purposes and time, they are as good a tax as say an income tax.
It is the fact that tariffs are target for specific purposes and times which makes them dangerous. Suppose, in his quest to have gasoline as expensive here as in Europe, Obama had been able to impose a tariff on every barrel of imported crude? (That's about half the daily supply, in the US). While the domestic oil industry would have benefited from the price support (the effective price of domestic crude would have gone up), the consumer would have paid more at the pump despite there being more oil than ever on the world markets.
Now, turn that over, and when the tariff came off, the collapse in the energy sector would have been devastating, with prices not covering extraction costs and the industry imploding.
That is the ability to impose a boom/bust economy, and in so doing, pick entire sectors which will benefit or collapse as a result. The potential for equity market manipulation is staggering.
The ability to impoverish or enrich investors, depending on who is invested in what, unfathomable.
We gripe about picking winners and losers during the Obama administration (they did it with regulations and other policy changes), and that remains intact. Now, impose another layer of government picking winners and losers with tariffs, and everyone loses. Create that sort of fundamental uncertainty in the marketplace, where your living could be gone tomorrow, and the whole economy will hunker down in caution, while consumers will pay more at the point of sale.