Tariffs are to protect the interests of the country's businesses. The country's businesses hire the people in the country.
Without businesses in a country there are no employees.
Without employees there are no products.
When there are no products there is nothing to buy.
When there are no businesses there are no wages.
When there are no wages there is poverty.
You can't print and borrow money forever pretending you have an economy.
We do not NEED world markets if we produce what we need.
When we are self-sufficient (as we once were) we buy luxury items from foreign markets when we consider them worth the price.
Being dependent on foreign markets is quite another thing. That is where we are today.
Whoever owns what you need, owns you. America first is about making us independent. People with a slave mentality don't get it. Such are losers.
Tariffs serve to incentivize the production of American-made products.
When we begin producing what we need, tariffs become irrelevant as we are no longer import the products we need.
It is about vulnerabilities and prosperity.
A person who ignores their vulnerabilities, pretending that they don't exist, is a fool.
A person who lives for immediate self-gratification is a fool.
We are on the verge of bankruptcy because of the national dept accrued by Congress. Pretending that we can't collapse economically is delusional.
We either get our act together by getting back to work and making products and providing services or we will fade into oblivion or, what is worse, crash with a loud bang.
China (our main supplier) could decide they do not want American dollars which have been devalued by self-created inflation and by simply printing them.
The American dollar, without the value of real products underpinning it, will soon be seen as monopoly money by China and the rest of the world.