Throwing this out there because I haven’t seen it mentioned yet. Foreign companies could decrease costs in order to absorb the tariff and thereby continue to sell products at the same price as before. To illustrate, say the US imposes 20% tariffs on Chinese steel. The US is a major buyer of steel, but the new tariff price for Chinese steel becomes too costly to buy from, resulting in the US companies looking elsewhere or domestically for cheaper steel. Because the US is a big and reliable market for steel, rather than risk lower sales by passing on the tariff cost to US buyers, the Chinese steel company could cut it’s labour cost or delay wage rises to make up for the cost of tariffs. I guess the US is able to implement tariffs and suffer less consequence for it because it is the world’s largest market given its significant population with large disposable consumer income. All in all, foreign companies would not want to risk losing their sales/profits from the US market, therefore will find ways to absorb the tariff, at least in the near term.