I have heard some people say that tariffs are a good thing to reduce our trade deficit.
Bad idea?
Not necessarily, if you don’t mind paying more money for your stuff, regardless of whether it is produced here or not.
1. Trade deficits are impossible.
2. A tariff is a tax. If you wanted to buy X at Y price, and a tariff makes is Y + Z, you (a) will no longer buy it, which is bad, because both you and the seller are now poorer than you otherwise would have been, or (b) might buy it anyway, but spend more of your waking life working/paying for it than is necessary, and that is bad. Also, the gov. will be working (with your money) to keep an inefficent producer in business. Said producer uses N + P resources to produce a product, while his tariff burdened competitor uses only N to produce it. Bad.
A tariff does not reduce deficits, it makes many people poorer and transfers wealth from you to government favored maggots.