Likewise, if you tax a business transaction, regardless of where the tax is nominally applied, you're taxing both (or all) parties to the transaction.
Lets see, importer(an American) buys goods from foreign source, pays import duties to bring it in to nation for sale.
To make a profit, the importer must resell said goods for tariff, + cost of goods + his labor costs. If he is unable to make a profit, an American(importer) pays the tax with a loss and possible failure of the business, If he sells with profit the consumer pays the tax. Either case, no tax is passed on to a foreign interest, especially one that can low ball its human and natural resources to the profit of a small few in the ruling elite.
It's inevitable.
Not in an open society bargaining with a closed oligarchy. The open society pays the freight or doesn't trade, the closed society simply expends its resources for whatever its rulers will settle for on the backs of it serfs in a world market playing the same game. Serfs in closed societies are renewable and expendable commodities. At least until the nation implodes (e.g. NK, Iraq, et al)
That's an argument I'd file in the same category of the question of whether the bat hits the ball or the ball hits the bat.
Or the bat does hits a different ball. World trade involves more than one bat and one ball.
If you extract water from one portion of a cup, the water level won't decrease in only that section while staying the same everywhere else.
What what does a small ruling minority care about the whole cup from which it extracts its current pleasure. From their view once their is always sufficient to their desires.
Your analogs do not reflect the realities of a world of many closed societies.
Even closed societies have limits. My body is a "closed society", too, but that doesn't mean someone can keep putting greater and greater burdens on me and I won't notice the difference.
At least until the nation implodes (e.g. NK, Iraq, et al)
It's the ones that know how not to implode that cause the greater problem.