From my understanding of how tariffs as a whole work, the government(s) of the country the imports come from do not pay the tariffs, the company actually importing the good does, and the vast majority of companies will simply hike the price of a product up so they make the same amount of money, and pass the tariff onto the customer. This is one year where I honestly completely checked out of policy, so I'm not sure what tax incentives or other incentives that Trump said he would implement so that companies won't just keep using the cheap foreign labor and raise the prices on American customers. What are those incentives, because I highly doubt that companies are going to all of a sudden pay Americans decent wages for the labor just because of the tariff.
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For a car guy like myself, it sounds like this means that if I want to bring this Alpine A110 sports car from France into America, I'd have to pay more to do that as it is not sold in America at all.
I'm probably grossly simplifying these numbers for argument's sake, but we'll say the car costs $100,000.
We'll also say that whatever tariffs he puts in place would probably make putting that car into my possession cost me $130,000 when all is said and done, 25 year import rule not withstanding (I hope Trump reverses this).
It sounds like Trump also wants to combine these tariffs with as many tax cuts as possible for everyone, therefore putting me in a better position to get a nice, albeit niche car like that if I so choose.
That doesn't sound like such a bad deal at all. It blows my mind that even economics professors deliberately neglect to properly teach how these tariffs actually work. It seems like they could actually be part of a better alternative to the debt based system we have now.
Apologies if I sound naive or ignorant; I'm trying my best to understand these concepts.
I don't think importing a used car made and sold overseas has tariffs applied. JDM cars imported here don't have tariffs, AFAIK, just local sales taxes. Tariffs would apply to new cars built overseas but intended to be sold here.
The threat of tariffs in the 1980s are why Japanese car manufacturers have production plants in the US now. If they build their cars here, no tariffs.
Imports from China has long needed wage and environmental law arbitrage tariffs , for two decades or more. They rob us blind while polluting the hell out of their country and working their people literally to death, and this is without even getting into their total disregard for intellectual property or the organized crime family that is the CCP.
It sounds like the so called "experts" were literally making the case for tariffs then.
From what you're saying, it sounds like tariffs are just a way to put money back into the infrastructure without directly taxing citizens.
The fact that paid "economists" from the big institutions and publications think this is a bad thing boggles the mind.
Remember that almost all economists are big tree trade advocates, thanks to Adam Smith's book Wealth of Nations, and to them getting in the way of free trade is tantamount to heresy.
None of them seem to grasp that the US hasn't enjoyed truly free trade with Japan since the US gave up the military governorship, and hasn't had free trade with China since the 1940s.