Your distinction between direct and indirect taxes are useless. All of that money comes from one source me and you. Business only collect taxes they do not pay them. Tariffs are taxes. Consumers me and you pay for it. So the questions is what is the best way to tax? One that is the most efficient and least obtrusive to our freedom. A transaction tax would do it. Similar to a cat but with important differences. It would have problem raising enough revenue.
No, some, if not the majority, of the tariff tax is born by the foreign producer in the forms of lower margins or less wages and only some is partially born by the US consumer. It is a false meme that consumers ultimately pay for all increased cost (or get passed through all decreased cost). The easiest way to prove that is this year, corporate profits will go up more than 10% because of the new tax bill. Want to bet CPI still goes up 2% and doesn’t drop 10%?