Let us for a moment consider Gollum as the Trickster. He alone of all characters in ME seems to me to have the moral ambiguity neccessary to pull off this role. Indeed, by using
Lmp's criterion at the beginning of this thread, he fits almost to a T
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...is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At times, he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being.'
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What put me off of calling him the trickster from the beginning is that he is not of the same ilk as Coyote, Loki, Ananzi, etc. He is no god-figure, and no culture hero. He is clearly a mere creature like everyone else. His trickeries are not of the 'stealing the sun' variety, but small mischiefs. He falls under the dominion of others, notably Sauron, in a way that my reading of an archtypal trickster never would. The Trickster is almost definable by his independance from any power, whereas Gollum is almost definable by his subservience to one (the Ring). Yet for all that, I think, for the excellent reasons posted above by
Fordim, Davem and others, that he may be the closest thing Tolkien will let us have.
He is a small trickster and in the whole history of ME, he is too small a character to fill these archtypal shoes. But in the context of LotR alone, he is a giant character, one of the more distinct and talked-about characters, who majorly influences everything he comes in contact with. In this limited context, he could be the Trickster.