Trade won’t occur if the costs incurred from government or State action increase the price to a level I am unwilling to pay, or else get me to reconsider a producer or service provider that doesn’t incur these additional costs. State interference isn’t a non-factor you can dismiss out of hand, honestly it probably is present in most transactions, but tariffs introduce an additional cost that specifically targets foreign producers and providers.

> This is going to sound condescending, and I'm sorry about that, but you should consider adopting a principled set of economic beliefs rather than one based exclusively on your politics.

I appreciate the consideration and that is good advice. If I had more time I would go back and re-read what I said to see if there’s anywhere my politics and economics appear to be blending together because I do actually try to keep those separate.

Primarily what I’m arguing here, or intending to be arguing are terms from a mostly neutral perspective, it’s still my perspective, so not entirely neutral.

With all due respect I enjoy reading discussions where people are agreed upon on what they are discussing, and tariffs are one of those discussions where words like “fair” get thrown around in several different directions, and inherently they are not fair and not intended to be fair. They serve a purpose, a revenue generating political purpose, maybe even several political purposes, and when words like “fair” get thrown around in such a manner, it really ruins the discussion because it’s not a discussion: it’s a tactical game of obfuscation played by whoever influenced the participants views most strongly.

So let me quote myself from a different comment chain. Perhaps you will still perceive my economics and politics to continue bleeding together; I think any considerations of economic policy are going to have some level of politics in then considering what is being discussed is a form of policy, but I haven’t put forward any explicit policies today.

> To be clear, I’m not anti-tariff. My priorities might be different, and all other things being equal I prefer no tariffs to tariffs by default, but let’s not pretend they’re intended to make trade fairer. They’re revenue first, retribution second (these last two may have flipped in the 20th century, but that’s a separate argument to have), and all other effects are tertiary.