A snippet from Krugman's Substack

Krugman:

Here’s the story: Trumpers are claiming that tariffs

1. Won’t increase prices, because foreign producers will absorb the cost

2. Will cause a large shift in U.S. demand away from imports to domestic production

3. Will raise huge amounts of revenue

If you think about it for a minute, you realize that (1) is inconsistent with (2): If prices of imports don’t rise, why would consumers switch to domestically produced goods? At the same time, (2) is inconsistent with (3): If imports drop a lot, tariffs won’t raise a lot of money, because there won’t be much to tax.

So the public story about tariffs doesn’t make any sense. And Trump’s rants about tariffs go beyond nonsense.