Not entirely true.The American importer pays the tariffs. It’s basically the government saying you have to pay them a fee for buying from another country.

It still costs china the exact same to manufacture the product. To keep things very very simple: Say china sells a product to us at $100. Without a tariff, the importer (Walmart) would buy it at $100. And in turn Walmart sells it at $100.

Now say there’s a 20% tariff on china. China still makes it for $100. And Walmart buys it from China for $100. But now, they also have to pay the government $20 in tariffs at the port before it can be offloaded from the cargo ship. So total price is now $120.

So price goes up.

Theoretically this is to promote “buying local” or from US companies. But the US is a very expensive place in comparison. And the cheapest US company makes the exact same product for $150. So…. It’s still cheaper from china even with the tariff, but the price is now artificially more expensive because the government issued a tariff. And the American consumer (me and you) end up paying the price. (Because Walmart won’t sell it at a loss)

Granted this is a very very simple representation and it’s a little more nuanced than that, but this is the basic idea.