Raise them across the board not for specific industries. We are paying for cheap imports twice. Once when we pay for the product and again when we pay to support the unemployed Americans.
Import tariffs worked well for this country for 180+ years. What we’ve seen since we’ve lowered them is our industries devastated and our enemies like China empowered.
Really? How measured? Most of the justification was to protect fledgling industries during the early stage of the Industrial Revolution and I get that. However, that ship has sailed and it is now used to protect inefficient industries. Back in the 1950's when super-cheap oil was discovered in the mid-East, the domestic oil producers seduced Eisenhower with the military argument that we needed quotas and tariffs to protect against the instability of the mid-East. Ike bought into it. The result: OPEC. What if we had capped our own wells back then, sucked the mid-East dry with $1/bbl oil and when they ran out, we uncapped ours? Consumers would have benefited immensely and the oil industry would still have existed since imports could not make up total supply.
Horse and buggies worked pretty well for 180+, too, but I fail to see that as an effective substitute for air travel.