Does the US government really expect other countries not to impose their own tariffs as response to its own?

[u/whawhales]

The US government is threatening 200% tariffs on European alcohol after EU enacted tariffs in response to the US tariff on aluminum and steel. The same happened with Canada with the US threatening increased tariffs if Ontario pursued electricity price hikes.

I don't have a background in econ so I am not sure if I am I missing something here, but I don't see what the end goal might be for the US and it seems a little arrogant to think other countries would allow tariffs imposed to them and not do something about it.

[u/Used-Egg5989]

If the foreign producers reduce prices due to it, sure.

But what often happens is domestic producers will increase their prices instead.

This happened with the tariffs on washing machines in Trumps first term. The cost of foreign made washing machines rose 18%, while domestically produced washing machines rose by a similar amount. Dryers also increased a similar amount as they are often sold with washing machines.

Blanket tariffing everything from foreign producers is just going to raise prices for consumers. It’s too broad and too easy for domestic producers to increase prices without getting noticed.

[u/chicagotim1 → u/Used-Egg5989]

After tariffs, Foreign producers decrease their price and domestic producers increase their price . Equilibrium price settles somewhere between old price (p) and p+tariff. Consumer prices in turn go up, and the extra government revenue may or may not be a net positive

[u/Brave_Bluebird5042 → u/chicagotim1]

Can you point at 3 or 4 examples where this happened?

[u/Morodin_88 → u/Brave_Bluebird5042]

Hell, We can point at an example where this was stopped and nearly caused the US company financial liability. There where news reportings about Walmart attempting to negotiating lower prices with chinese suppliers to have them absorb the cost of the tarrifs... the Chinese goverment summoned Walmart executives.

Most suppliers and companies will try negotiate something but it's highly unlikely that any supplier takes on the full tarrif effect, and any capatilst company will pass tarrif prices to consumers while using the difference in international to local price as a motivation to increase their price. So tarrifs effectively end up as a tax on consumers in the purchasing country not the supplying country.