>For the benefit of HN readers, no serious economist supports tariffs in any form.

This is categorically wrong, many economists support tariffs as a way for countries to find relief from flooding or other anti-competitive practices.

In 2010, Paul Krugman (an economist who won a Nobel prize for this theories on international trade) called for a 25% tariffs on all Chinese imports [0].

>But due to the political history of tariffs it becomes possible for politicians to claim (falsely) that tariffs will benefit the economy, when in fact they are (at best) a handout to specific industries.

But on longer time horizons and some situations, it's hard to assert that tariffs are net negatives. Many countries use tariffs to encourage domestic industry - South Korea could have never created a domestic auto industry if they allowed Japanese and American car companies to freely sell cars in Korea. The tariffs that Koreans paid from the 1960s to the 1980s supported Hyundai - it's hard to imagine that Korea is worse off in 2018 because it created tariffs to encourage domestic auto production.

Functionally, China's IP and ownership rules are tariffs and they've been wildly successful for China. If China didn't strong arm IP and capital out of companies, they'd be worse off.

>What really boggles my mind about the groundswell of support for tariffs is that much of it is coming from people who would traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare. Yet they are happy to receive it when it's called tariffs and also happy to receive bailout money when their industry is harmed by the tariffs.

The difference is that tariff beneficiaries have to work whereas welfare recipients don't (or won't) and that's matters to the working class who pays for the social safety net. Additionally, the taxes that support welfare are a lot less discretionary than participation in most markets affected by tariffs. If I really don't want to pay a steel tariff, I can buy items made out of other materials. If I really don't want to pay my taxes to support welfare, a person with a gun will eventually show up at my door.

>Put another way, tariffs are simply a way of introducing the government into economic transactions. If a foreign government foolishly decides to tax its citizens via a tariff on US goods, this harms the foreign citizens.

And it harms the US citizens who are deprived of business they otherwise would have received.

>When the US then plays tit-for-tat and adds its own tariff, this punishes American consumers in an attempt to harm foreign exporters.

Additionally it punishes foreign producers and gives us a way to negotiate our way to lower trade barriers.

>But I repeat, no serious economist (someone who studies the economy scientifically) supports tariffs.

Please stop asserting this, a cursory google search would reveal that a lot of economists support tariffs in limited circumstances and think they're an important tool for economic development.

>They are a political phenomenon and the rhetoric used to support them has no basis in reality.

Tell that to the Indian politicians who run and win on autarky-lite platforms.

>The understanding that tariffs are foolish is a universal among economists and is not remotely a partisan issue.

It's actually a very big schism between the orthodox economist view (that's primarily focused on total wealth) and heterodox views (one that's focused on the environment, the working class, etc.). You're right that most economists believe lower tariffs produce more global wealth, but many concede that some agents are made worse-off by international trade and this is the basis of a cost-benefit argument.

>It's one thing to want to grant welfare to a specific industry for some political reason, but completely another to introduce a distorting factor like a tariff.

They're not that distinct, tariffs can be a way to grant welfare to a specific industry.

>I have a trade deficit with my grocer, for example. Why? Because I chose to exchange money for groceries. How is this bad? The same applies to nations.

That's a gross oversimplification. If you want to change your life and think about how to accrue wealth, it'd make sense to look at your spending and figure out how to reduce your costs and increase your income. Economic agents can do both with development - you could open your own grocery store, you could grow your own food, etc. It's very hard to compete with established players and you might have to spend extra money to compete at first just to get up the learning curve. In practice, it means something like saving 10% of what you spend at the grocery to buy seeds and farming equipment and gradually transitioning from grocery-bought food to self-made food. We can argue about whether it makes sense to change tomorrow, you have to change something today. Tariffs are a way to change the prices faced by consumers and the competitive landscape faced by producers, in some situations they can help agents achieve things they wouldn't have been Able to otherwise.

[0]: http://www.idealtaxes.com/post3079.shtml