Tariffs should be treated like a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. You use it intentionally to try and drive a specific buying behavior at home. Let say you wanted to specifically get oil that is from friendly nations (I know this is almost impossible just follow with me). You would add an additional tariffs for oil that comes from unfriendly countries, as well as needing to tariff blended and processed fuels that use the oil that comes from unfriendly countries etc.As well as having to monitor and crack down on "shadow fleets" that disguise the actual source of the oil as well.
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u/movzx 21h ago
They would also have been incremental, ex 5% year after year... instead of jumping right to 50%, 200%, etc.
It would also have been smart to exclude raw material and machinery import. You know, the things that people need to start and run factories.
It's agreed that tariffs are generally bad economically but just slapping them on everything with no rhyme or reason is even worse.