To be clear, I think it’s a shit idea and we know (since Elon is running things) the execution will be awful. Tariffs are almost always a shitty idea and will cause nothing but inflation. But that’s the point for Trump. It’s a stealth tax increase.

The only times I think tariffs are good is if:

• Another country is subsidizing an industry with the goal of creating a monopoly on something essential.
• You have an infant industry that’s viable at scale but it needs time and investment to scale up but it’ll be competitive once it does
• Frienemy national security situations with unreliable trade partners (to wildly over-simplify, if you import all your guns and bullets from a frienemy and your exports to them are fancy purses, you probably need a domestic producer of guns and bullets more than they need a fancy purse industry.)
• Something wild like a stupid, unjust war initiated by a madman. But that never happens, right?

But it’s always, in the end, a tax on your citizens and there are almost alway better ways to go about it than tariffs.