I would argue that may be true for 5% tariffs. However 25% tariffs are a different kettle of fish
While the tariffs are in our case always payed by Americans, the payment is voluntary. To avoid the tariff, submit your purchase order to a nontariffed vendor nation. Buy somewhere else and the tariff is irrelevant to the purchaser
An uncollected tariff on China goods means a Chinese vendor lost as sale.
And your statement totally misunderstands trade. It is absolutely wrong. Tariffs are always payed by the importer. Tatiffs are a tax levied by the government of the importing country on goods being imported. A Tariff is an import Duty. An import Duty is a tax on imports.
You fail to distinguish that the demand for the same type of good from country A may be much stronger than from country B, because of things like better prices, better quality, etc. Consumers from the country imposing the tariffs suffer either by settling for inferior quality or artificially higher prices. In doing so, tariffs tend to lower the standard of living of the tariff-imposing country.
The importing country, however, can go elsewhere to sell their goods. And also, generally, the country imposing the tariffs will eventually eliminate them because the tariffs harm their own economy.
Notice, even here, nobody likes tariffs. They were use here to intimidate Mexico into culling this immigration fiasco because Congress won’t do their freaking job and the American People haven’t woken up yet to their need and power of throwing the bums out.
Tariffs are illusory - a palliative measure to make people feel good about somebody doing something. But tariffs fail to solve the root causes of our economic woes which lie squarely at the feet of the federal government - the feds, not Mexico or China, are the root cause of our economic malaise.
Again, the threat of tariffs was/is real, but the effect hurts the tariff-imposing country more than the importing country who, as I said, can sell what they can with the imposing country (some demand may still be strong enough) and also go elsewhere to ply their trade.
And passed to the consumer unless the same goods are bought elsewhere when other deals can be made.
The goods are originally bought from the lowest cost supplier suggesting the tariff makes previously higher cost alternatives now competitive but at higher consumer cost.