Comment by johnnyanmac

>If I am willing to pay 10% more for a locally made product, then a 10% tariff has no effect on me assuming that the local company has non colluding local competitors,

That's the unfortunate, greedy part of it all. Even in the purest form, if tarriffs raise prices 10%, the domestic companies will still proceed to do a price hike instead of compete in the newly level playing field. They use the opportunity and raise prices more for hopes of a larger margin. Especially in such an inflationary economy.

The customer loses out in the end because domestic companies (in this pure scenario) can't help themselves.

The impure points are more common and simply show how stupid the policies are. If you have blanket tarriffs and don't have silicon mines to take advantage of, domestic companies don't have much choice in where to get silicon. We simply don't have that resource domestically to begin with. Coffee is another common example.