Congress is also weighing legislation that would strengthen national security checks on Chinese investment. In a House hearing on Thursday, Heath P. Tarbert, an assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, said the current system for assessing investment is riddled with loopholes that allowed Chinese companies to evade such checks.

Concern over China’s practices picked up speed at the end of the Obama administration and has only increased since. Last year, a technology-focused unit in the Defense Department issued a report arguing that rising Chinese investment in Silicon Valley was giving China unprecedented access to the military technologies of the future, and increasing Chinese ownership of supply chains that service the United States military.

In recent months, China’s political apparatus has exerted even greater control over the nation’s economy. Business leaders and politicians of both parties now widely say that Washington’s past strategy of offering Beijing economic incentives to liberalize its market has failed. On Sunday, China officially ended term limits on the presidency, clearing the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely.

Administration officials say that past failure to rein in China warrants a much tougher approach. Mr. Trump took one step toward this in his national security strategy, which identified China as an economic aggressor. When a top Chinese economic envoy visited in late February, the administration asked China to shave $100 billion off its $375.2 billion trade surplus with the United States, two people close to the talks said. And while the steel and aluminum tariffs will hit many countries, they are primarily aimed at combating overcapacity in Chinese metals, including those that are routed through other nations.

The next step, advisers say, is to more aggressively focus on trade with China.

The United States is expected to impose tariffs on Chinese imports of high-technology goods specified in the Made in China 2025 plan, including semiconductors and new energy vehicles. But they could go beyond that to target more mundane products, including consumer electronics, apparel and even shoes. The breadth of the tariffs remains a contentious topic in the business sector and the White House, with some industries fretting about retaliation and increased costs to American companies and consumers.

Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said on Wednesday that while the administration was right to focus on China’s unfair trade practices, his group strongly disagreed with sweeping tariffs.

“Simply put, tariffs are damaging taxes on American consumers,” he said. “Tariffs of $30 billion a year would wipe out over a third of the savings American families received from the doubling of the standard deduction in tax reform.”