Tariffs are a consumption tax. Wealthy individuals tend to leverage their wealth to spend more money.

Wealthy individuals own a larger share of businesses. Those businesses once again will bear the burden of these tariffs along with their consumers.

Compare this to a payroll tax. This is a direct tax that scales as a company’s employee base scales. This directly harms employees by decreasing their salary. It also decreases the number of employees a company can hire.

Compare this to a corporate income tax. This also increases prices and decreases employment. This is not much different than tariffs. However tariffs are targeted and create incentives to produce more within a nation (ie more domestic jobs).

Tariffs also provide a counterbalance against companies outsourcing (a technique that depresses domestic wages and encourages financial creativity to dodge federal taxes by establishing foreign based entities (eg Double Irish Agreement)