Most countries have an average / mean tariff rate of <10% per the World Bank and WTO. Further, most countries probably have zero tariffs on most products, with higher ones for specific reasons:
The wiki link is kinda interesting. The first column is irrelevant, the last column exempts food and energy and still raises the question (based on the first column) of what the actual trade would be if there were no tariffs.
Certainly for the first column it may be true that if the tariffs are so high on some products that there are going to be no imports and the "weighted actual" will be close to 0.
I'm not going to the last column since it ignores two important categories.
Because they have local industry interest groups that control their politicians which screws over their own country. They'd mostly be better off without those tariffs.
Here's a hot tip: if you see a country like North Korea, don't ask why they're doing what they're doing on the assumption that it's good. Move in the opposite direction.
Tariffs make things less globally economically efficient. Sometimes that is the goal for specific industries. Economic efficiency is not the ultimate goal.
But no other country has blanket tariffs on so many other countries.
Tariffs aren't necessarily bad. They can be a pretty effective tool to support local industries, or otherwise discourage imports. Or as a retalitory tool to negotiate with.
But blanket tariffs against the whole world seems unhinged. Many of the products and materials we import have no domestic sources or limited domestic sourced that are not expandable. The us won't be able to grow domestic coffee to meet the domestic demand. Tariffing coffee import is just going to make morning routines slightly more expensive for many americans.
There was a lot less pushback for specific industry tariffs or specific country tariffs during the last Trump administration. Steel tariffs and the trade war with China weren't necessarily liked by all, especially in the specifics, but tariff all the imports is terrible.
Remember when this administration says another country has put a "tariff" on the US what they mean is there is a negative trade balance with that country (as pretty much there must be with the USD being the currency of choice).
They then decide based on trade balance to enact an actual, unilateral tariff.
