The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa
For the benefit of HN readers, no serious economist supports tariffs in any form.  Tariffs appeal to the naive idea that trade imbalances between two nations are a bad thing. They simply are not a bad thing.<p>But due to the political history of tariffs it becomes possible for politicians to claim (falsely) that tariffs will benefit the economy, when in fact they are (at best) a handout to specific industries.<p>What really boggles my mind about the groundswell of support for tariffs is that much of it is coming from people who would traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare. Yet they are happy to receive it when it&#x27;s called tariffs and also happy to receive bailout money when their industry is harmed by the tariffs.<p>Put another way, tariffs are simply a way of introducing the government into economic transactions.  If a foreign government foolishly decides to tax its citizens via a tariff on US goods, this harms the foreign citizens. When the US then plays tit-for-tat and adds its own tariff, this punishes American consumers in an attempt to harm foreign exporters.<p>But I repeat, no serious economist (someone who studies the economy scientifically) supports tariffs. They are a political phenomenon and the rhetoric used to support them has no basis in reality. There have been countless blog posts and articles from economists since the president began talking about tariffs that have pointed out the many ways in which the president confuses the meaning of some of the big numbers he presents as justification, etc.<p>The understanding that tariffs are foolish is a universal among economists and is not remotely a partisan issue.<p>It&#x27;s one thing to want to grant welfare to a specific industry for some political reason, but completely another to introduce a distorting factor like a tariff.<p>I have a trade deficit with my grocer, for example. Why? Because I chose to exchange money for groceries.  How is this bad?  The same applies to nations.