Understanding tariffs

It seems that our schools must not be teaching Economics 101 anymore.

Certainly, based on the amount of ignorance being demonstrated about Trump’s tariff proposals. Let’s do this in very simple terms.

A merchant buys something to sell. He takes his cost, the expenses of selling (such as personnel, shipping, advertising, his profit, etc.) to the cost and that becomes your price. Very simple indeed. If you add a 20% tariff to the product cost, the retail price goes up by 20%. That is just as simple.

If you think YOU are not going to pay that tariff, you really should have paid more attention in school.

James Prescott

Schaumburg