It occurred to me that tariffs are really a backdoor way of introducing consumption tax (aka sales tax, VAT, etc). It has been a conservative policy goal for many years, as the conservatives believe that income tax penalizes entrepreneurship, but the politics make it virtually impossible to switch to because consumption tax is regressive, and it is a huge change. The tariffs debate and the general political atmosphere created a misdirection, resulting in both income and consumption tax being with us now. The next development will be the politicians discovering to their horror the high levels of taxation, and abolishing the income tax. Brilliant!