>Tariffs did not make the price of your BLT go up, it’s greed.
What do you want to do about it, Stalin? Use the power of the state to legislate away human greed? Imprison these greedy people? Impose price controls (which have a long, storied history of not working and only leading to shortages and queues)?
We build economic policy around human nature, not otherwise. Humans will always seek to maximize profit at all costs. If you lock out foreign suppliers from competing using tariffs, local suppliers will reason that they can charge more and will rightly do so. And tariffs in one area end up affecting so many other areas in unforeseen ways. That's how tariffs on chemical fertilizer might end up affecting the price of something as mundane as bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
That's why free markets are important. They give buyers options, and sellers then have to lower their prices reasonably to be chosen/picked from that sea of options.
If you want lower prices, remove tariffs and trade restrictions.
Fighting amongst ourselves when we should be shaming the mayonnaise and baloney sandwich over-pricers. That’s the problem with the petite bourgeois and proletariat.
Shaming is so effective, the sellers' faces will turn red with shame, and they will immediately drop prices by 2/3 at least. Hah, hah, no, they won't. Of course, they will overprice when you have no other options.
What do you want to do about it, Stalin? Use the power of the state to legislate away human greed? Imprison these greedy people? Impose price controls (which have a long, storied history of not working and only leading to shortages and queues)?
We build economic policy around human nature, not otherwise. Humans will always seek to maximize profit at all costs. If you lock out foreign suppliers from competing using tariffs, local suppliers will reason that they can charge more and will rightly do so. And tariffs in one area end up affecting so many other areas in unforeseen ways. That's how tariffs on chemical fertilizer might end up affecting the price of something as mundane as bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
That's why free markets are important. They give buyers options, and sellers then have to lower their prices reasonably to be chosen/picked from that sea of options.
If you want lower prices, remove tariffs and trade restrictions.