Tariffs are taxes on imported goods. These tariffs can help American businesses compete with foreign companies. Tariffs can also help in negotiation tactics and with government revenue.
Tariffs commonly lead to an increase in prices for consumers. Unlike what is commonly believed, tariffs are normally not paid by the country who the tariffs are against. Instead they are paid by the businesses who buy from foreign companies.
Tariffs have many benefits and can lead to many favorable outcomes. Although tariffs can help, it can also lead to many problems. Firstly, putting tariffs on a company can make trading with that country strained. That country will likely look toward alternative countries for trading. In addition, although tariffs can help domestic companies if the companies can’t industrialize or produce to demand, prices will skyrocket. For example, think about cars. Cars in the United States have parts made in a variety of different countries such as Canada. If there are tariffs on Canadian goods such as aluminum the overall prices of the car would increase. Although domestic companies could create more factories to produce aluminum it would be unlikely that they would meet demand. According to Visual Capitalist, 60% of United States aluminum is from Canada. This means that we are highly dependent on Canada for aluminum, to produce enough to meet demands domestic companies would need to produce 60% more aluminum. This is practically impossible to do, at least in the short term. In the long term tensions between the countries could worsen and in the short term prices will skyrocket hurting American consumers.
In the end, tariffs can be beneficial but that depends on how dependent the country putting tariffs on the other countries is. If the country placing tariffs can easily find an alternative country to buy the goods from or can produce enough domestically, then this can be a good choice.
Related Stories:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/aac01-us-aluminum-imports/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0el8ed21w9o
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/08/trump-tariffs-live-updates-stock-market-china.html
Take Action:
https://www.thecorporategovernanceinstitute.com/insights/news-analysis/how-to-cope-with-tariffs/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/5-things-to-know-about-tariffs-and-how-they-work
