A tariff or import tax is a duty imposed by a national government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports of goods and is paid by the importer. Exceptionally, an export tax may be levied on exports of goods or raw materials and is paid by the exporter.
The economic burden of tariffs falls on the importer, the exporter, and the consumer. [Wikipedia]
It doesn’t matter who sends the actual tariff payment, it gets priced into the cost of the product.
Trump started threatening anyone who was going to do that, because he doesn't want his face attached to price hikes.
Eh, standard business school logic these days is that if you want to maximize profits, you should charge what the market will bear, not your costs + some fixed profit.
So if you're already charging what the market will bear, there may be more wiggle room to absorb some of the hit of tariffs, so long as it still leaves you making enough profit or in a favorable position. It still comes down to what maximizes tariffs: at higher prices, demand drops, but at lower prices, your profit/item drops.
Still, yeah, from what I understand, the bulk of the tariff costs were passed along to customers.
It's what POTUS was saying since day 1. That we've been getting ripped off and we're gonna make the other countries pay us etc etc etc.
It is, as I said in the post, obviously wrong - but that's where it comes from.
See also: disinformation that "other countries charge us the same tariffs", which turns out to be either a plain lie, or they mean VAT (a sales tax, like we have in the US).
"But we found that Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariff rates weren’t based on tariffs that other countries charged on goods coming from the U.S. Instead, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative came up with the rates by dividing the size of a country’s trade imbalance with the U.S. in goods by how much America imports in goods from that nation. "