At this point the company that paid the 20 dollars now has a decision to either raise the price of the product, eat the entire cost, or split it somehow. At no point did the other country have to deal with the tariff itself. If the US set a 100% tariff they scoop up that fucking money and get it. Now...the company is likely to make the customer eat part of that for sure.
At no point did the other country have to deal with the tariff itself.
Sure they did. If that's a foreign company, then they have to raise prices which hurts their competitveness (without increasing profit from higher prices at all), or eat the cost themselves which hurts their profits, or some combination of both.
That is going to hurt the foreign company.
If it's an american company running a factory in china or whatever, of course that hurts china too since perhaps that factory will now close down because it can't be profitable with 100% tariffs. It will also hurt the american company running the factory.
And so that complicates matters if it's not a chinese company in china getting hit with the tariff.
This isn't a choice, its just grabbing money to use it for some purpose, explained as the betterment of a nation sometimes, like roads and shit, or infrastructure. The problem is most modern nations have never had more than 2% actual tariff and now we have 10% permanent + 20-50% bonus tariff which is business shattering.
yes, it is business shattering. As corrupt, scamming, and dishonest as the chinese have been, there's no way there's so much slack in the system that they can eat 104% tariff and still be profitable. Or, put the other way, raise prices to be double (and not eat the cost at all) and still be an attractive product at double the price but still being cheap chinese crap at the end of the day.
That's their whole business model. Make cheap chinese crap, but it's cheap! What if you double the price? No one buys it.