(OP) No, they're not senseless but they are barriers. They can be senseless and they can be designed to be obstacles, a disingenuous way of having obstacles without admitting it. The truth is in the specifics.

One advantage of tariffs is that they let you have product safety and environmental standards that were designed for consumer & environmwntal safety instead of an ulterior motives. The most obvious example is the entirely estranged European & American dairy regulations which started as a way of protecting consumers but are now a way of protecting industries.

My argument is that if you could just admit that an industry is being protected, and have tariffs then we could enjoy eachothers' cheeses (at a higher price). We'd also raise tax revenue and probably have better consumer safety regulations, since they wouldn't have to (disingenuously) make the case that the way cheese is made in Scotland or prosciutto is made in Italy is fundamentally unsafe.

Which is why I added the adjective "senseless", implying that there are bureaucratic obstacles that aren't senseless.

Depending on who you're talking to "senseless" isn't as objective a term as you seem to imagine.

Of course it's not objective, it's highly subjective. c.f. "ugly cars". Ugly is subjective, but it doesn't mean "all cars are ugly", it's referring to the subset of cars that are ugly.

At least the ones that actually improve commensurate with the increased cost product safety or environmental impact rather than protecting the established players aren’t.