| HN Mirror

Correct. Tariffs increase the prices needed to purchase cars generally, not just those produced in the US. Perhaps that is what you're missing in your analysis. If the market rate for a car is P, which is below what America can produce the cars for, P_America, then the only way for domestic production to be competitive at an equivalent quality is for a tariff to balance P_America <= P+Tariff. So while folks prefer to purchase at price P, which a free and non-tariffed market would prefer and would give consumers a better price overall, we instead rely on a distortionary tariff and pay P_America, ultimately hurting consumers. In this Econ 201, this results in dead weight loss. Hacker News would benefit from image inserts here, so indirect you to wiki instead to understand the topic better. This is an inefficiency, meaning that tariffs in imported autos are driving a jobs program without real economic benefit to all (but a minor benefit to folks that are working in an industry doomed to fail after the tariff is removed by a more savvy political party who understands you can't infant-industry your way out of offshored industry).