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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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.