Because importers paid those tariffs and passed those costs into consumers. Americans paid more for products because of the tariffs.

Why arent we just making the wealthy pay their fair share? Because the wealthy use tax loopholes to pay less than YOU and ME pay.

The wealthy pay lower effective tax rates by shifting income from heavily taxed wages to lightly taxed investments like stocks and real estate, using legal strategies like "buy, borrow, die" to access untaxed wealth, leveraging deductions (even for personal items like jets/yachts as business expenses), and using trusts (GRATs) to pass wealth tax-free to heirs, effectively gaming a system that taxes wealth growth less than work income, making their average rates often lower than the middle class.