If the US electorate had better economics education, the 2024 candidates might have been forced to present sane and reasonable economic platforms, because doing so would have actual political value. Dare I say at least one of those candidates wouldn't even have made it to the primaries. Which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

They aren't economic idiots, they just know most American voters mistrust any economic concept more complex than "taxes bad. China bad. jobs good."

That's fair, and someone told be there's a distinction between politics and policy, but when politicians pander to the crowd, it's really hard to get an idea of what their actual policy will be.

I think it's worse. Regardless of the amount of education, they would have to care about policy enough to read and act on candidates' policies.

This is reductive. Even PhD economists are crap at predicting effects of certain policies (see the Federal Reserve - it has thousands of them!). The economy is very complex to model (and has reflexivity), and generally you will find credentialed experts on both sides of anything short of a trivial debate.

Tariffs have pros/cons, as does any other policy proposed by the two candidates. And the most tricky thing when computing the effects of these policies is: "what is the quantity we're trying to optimize for?" - where the "welfare of the people" is not really a measurable thing.

Economists have a pretty poor track record of predictions themselves... so I wouldn't be too smug about this. The economy (the real one, not the one in textbooks) is very complex, and most "obvious" things that you think about the various proposed policies are probably wrong.