Yes, but they are paid by the importer and (usually) passed on to the consumer. In effect they become a subsidy for local industry paid by consumers.

It's equivalent to the US implementing a VAT, except superior as it directly encourages replacement domestic manufacturing rather than merely acting as a tax on goods (as in the case of steel and aluminum, which are seeing US steel companies boom again with vast profit growth).

It doesn't merely redistribute wealth from one company to another. It reclaims critical domestic industrial investment and blue collar jobs as well.

Nucor's profit for all of 2016 was $796m, and $679m for 2014 (2015 was a bad year). For just the second quarter it was $683m and they've yet to see the full benefit of the tariffs. Alcoa, which has been a disaster the last several years, produced a billion dollars in operating income in the first two quarters, equal to a full year's operating income previously. US Steel which has been bleeding to death for years, looks capable of producing a billion dollars in annual profit again in the near future ($214m in profit in the second quarter on a large bump in sales).

Yes, we'll pay slightly higher steel & aluminum prices than we would have otherwise if we were getting artificially low dumping-level prices set by the Chinese impact on the global markets. It's worth it to regenerate major US industry back to health and the blue collar jobs that go with that. We can afford the slightly higher prices, we can't afford a hollowed-out industrial base.

It’s not at all like a VAT as it doesn’t impact everyone equally. It’s redistributing wealth to specific market participants from others.

In this case almost all profits that come to the domestic producers of steel come from the domestic consumers (and those impacted by tit for tat tariffs).

There might be very good reasons to prefer some industries to others but as a revenue source tariffs are not at all like a neutral VAT.

and the government collects that money? what do they do with it?

Yes. There was no income tax for the majority of US history, and tariffs were a major source of revenue for the government back then.

I didn't know this was the case, thank you for sharing. For anyone else reading, it appears federal income tax was first implemented in 1913, more reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

Tariffs were a source of bitter controversy between Northern and Southern states from the very beginning. It wasn't until the 1840s or 1850s that controversy over slavery became the dominate dynamic.

Northern manufacturers wanted high tariffs on manufactured goods and low tariffs on agricultural products. Southern farmers wanted high tariffs on agricultural products and low tariffs on manufactured goods--to placate Europeans so they'd buy Southern agricultural products, and to check the economic power of the North. And of course the Federal government relied on tariffs for income--the Articles of Confederation being considered a failure largely because the Federal government had no independent source of income--and as a foreign policy tool.

Everybody was at odds.

(Note that it was also common back then to impose export tariffs, which added considerable complexity to the debate. Today export tariffs are largely unheard of in the U.S. but perhaps ripe for rediscovery. Though we recently loosened restraints on the export of crude oil and natural gas, so it probably won't happen any time soon.)

Not quite; from same link, "President Abraham Lincoln and the United States Congress introduced in 1861 the first personal income tax in the United States." It was declared unconstitutional in 1895 by the Supreme Court, prompting the constitutional amendment.

Yes, but it is relatively small amount of revenue. Even with the new 10% tariffs on extra $200B, China tariffs in total will be less than 3% of federal government revenue.

3% of federal government revenue for tariffs on a single country seems substantial, but I get your point.

They will apparently collect $7.5B from steel tarrifs from everyone by the end of the year. That 10% is going up to 25% in January and China has no real counter to that since they’ve already tarriffed all our exports including some which really harm them. And trump has threatened another 267B.

3% is a substantial amount but I doubt it’ll be close to that much. Supply chains will move to avoid tarrifs, parts will be shipped to Brazil or Mexico and then into the US. Or from China to Vietnam etc. I highly doubt it’ll get to 3% but if it does and the economic impacts of that thus far are fairly minimal, that would be significant. Makes up for the entire tax cut deficit and more when accounted for dynamic scoring but again it’s still monumentally dumb to count on tariffs for revenue which Trump has been stupidly bragging about. I do completely support Trump’s trade war thus far however with the end goal of fair and reciprocal trade and limiting China militarily through the economy.

Yep, that's right.