> Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.

Don't some tariffs motivate people to do processing offshore?

If I import 1kg of copper and machine/etch/whatever it down into products, with some wastage, maybe I should just do everything offshore and only import the final articles with 500g of copper in it.

At some point, higher tariffs on input materials will overtake the higher value of finished goods and you might as well just manufacture the whole thing offshore anyway.

Yes, I am seriously looking at either splitting my production between internal and external uses to avoid passing tariff costs on to the majority of my customers who are foreign. I've worked at using US companies for many components but that is becoming less attractive. I wish it weren't this way but that is how it goes.

The capricious implementation of the tariffs is another issue. Biden raised tariffs but the implementation involved a months long comment period, then a notice months in advance, and finally implementation. It wasn't ideal in my mind (the specific tariffs) but there was a way to work through the consequences and plan accordingly. This administration does not believe in that. Maybe congress would if they took back responsibility for tariff policy but I don't see that happening right now.

That's one of the primary problems with tarrifs especially broad untargeted ones: the first thing they encourage is offshoring everything because it becomes cheaper to only be hit once on import, rather then multiple times by your suppliers and compliance costs, who in turn are also getting tarrifed on their supplies and tools.

Short term yes. But (this isn’t a defense of tariffs), the concept is that this will spur on domestic production in raw materials. So with this example, if there is a domestic source of copper it wouldn’t be subject to tariffs at all. In theory only, well balanced tariffs would make it cheaper to import US sourced raw materials for use in US bound products. In practice, I don’t think anyone knows what’s involved in doing that.