People have been trained to look at things on the spur of the moment with no delay or consideration. This is almost entirely the media's fault, in tandem with politicians who monopolize on ignorance. A bad policy can have an effect that looks good short-term and is very bad long-term, and they can sell it as a win. By the time the next election rolls around it's so long forgotten that they don't have to deal with the reality that they lied or were wrong about the real effects. De Tocqueville actually predicted this and spelled it out in his book, which is that when election cycles are so close together you basically have (a) constantly shifting priorities in government, which means no follow-through, and (b) and inability to hold anyone to anything since after each election it's almost like blank slate. You can't be upset at a Congress person if you just voted for them, right? That's cognitive dissonance at its best, and currently the system is designed for just that effect. And the reason you voted for them is because the other side is the devil, so you had to.
In terms of tariffs what this amounts to is that when jobs were initially exported and the cheap goods rolled in, it seemed like a huge win. It took a decade or more to fully realize how much of the American middle class was being decimated. If a tariff war initiated a halt of certain amount of importing, there would be a significant lag between the goods suddenly drying up, and people who work for importers perhaps losing their jobs, and between when the local production begins again and people are hired to work for them. The gap can be years between those, and even if (and this is the big question) this is far superior long-term there's nearly zero chance the populace will see it that way when the media thunders about how the tariff killed the economy. It's never going to be a real free market result, meaning getting to see the real results of a market decision, because the news and the politicians will brainwash everyone that it's bad far quicker than the result can ever be observed. And *that* is one of the reasons that economics isn't a science and why 99.9999% of economics theory is bunk and pseudo-science armchair wind. Because in the real world economics is actually the study of psychology as it applies to resource management, and we don't have any kind of science of psychology that can make predictive statements. Therefore in terms of economic planning the quarterly results will trump real long-term strategy, and the election cycle and it's reset button will prevent any kind of long-term testing on what really works and what doesn't. There is no possibility of staying power for that. And so in the long-term the policies that will prevail will tend to be the ones espoused by parties that aren't subject to elections; think tanks, powerful lobbies, and consortiums. They will always press for what advantages them and in the long-term they'll get it on average. This has been the trend for 120+ years and will likely continue on until the s**t hits the fan.
Until Americans are willing to back strong leadership that doesn't back away from lofty goals I don't think we'll see real experiments in economic planning that can be tested properly. For now the partisan bent is such that beating the other side is more important than picking a plan and sticking to it for 10-15 years to see how it works out, and that's how long it takes to truly test a plan. Right now no one either side trusts the people on the other, and so no Democrat is going to go to bat for a Republican President, and vice versa. Until a Republican citizen is willing to say of a D Pres "I didn't vote for him but he's my President, and I'll back his plan 100%!" we won't see any sense in monetary and fiscal policy. The entire economy and political system is basically swallowed up in a maelstrom of the never-ending election cycle, and it never stops so that we can just have governance. So good luck with ever determining whether tariffs are good or bad.
