The left calls tariffs a sales tax on Americans. It’s not. What happens when you put a tariff on China? China eats the tariff because there are several low labor cost competitor countries. If you put an across the board tariff on other countries, they will eat the cost to remain competitive. That is generally how it works for low barrier to entry goods. Most of what China sells.

For high barrier to entry goods like cars, you set the tariff at a point where they choose to build the product in the US. Thus avoiding the tariff. Why does that happen? Because the US is the biggest and most profitable market for most international goods.

What about strategic things like steel? That will cost a little more (but decrease with energy prices). However, material costs are a very small fraction of the cost of consumer goods. Labor and overhead are much bigger factors. And typically, other countries will not move a strategic good to the US.

What about exports if the other countries do something similar. Well they already are. Tariff targeting will get them to lower their tariffs and make it better for our goods. And a lot of things we export are things that they don’t make or make to our level.

That is the short version.