But this is the very point of tariffs

The point of tariffs is not to make those things made by evil Johnny Foreigner more expensive. It is to enable the domestic capitalists to raise the prices of their domestically made goods:

HS2 firm says new steel tariffs will ‘exacerbate’ cost pressures for UK construction industry

Doubling tariffs on imported steel will raise cost of the metal when Iran war is already inflating steel and concrete prices

This is not an error nor a happenstance: it’s the whole and precise point of the act itself. To drive up domestic steel prices. If that nasty foreign muck is banned from the country, or the price artificially raised, then those domestic producers can and will raise their prices. This will increase the profits - or reduce the losses - flowing to those capitalists who own the domestic suppliers. This effect is not some byblow of the tariffs, it’s the very point of them. This is the design itself.

The point of tariffs - and other such trade restrictions, quotas and so on - is to benefit the domestic capitalists. And why on Earth do we want to do that?

So, let’s not do that. Let’s not make everything in the country more expensive just to benefit that fraction of the 1%. The whole free trade thing is anti-capitalist and pro-consumer - so let’s be anti-capitalist and pro-consumer by having free trade.

Tim Worstall