> The cost of the item that the end user pays should reflect all costs associated with production and distribution to that end user.

Eh, standard business school logic these days is that if you want to maximize profits, you should charge what the market will bear, not your costs + some fixed profit.

So if you're already charging what the market will bear, there may be more wiggle room to absorb some of the hit of tariffs, so long as it still leaves you making enough profit or in a favorable position. It still comes down to what maximizes tariffs: at higher prices, demand drops, but at lower prices, your profit/item drops.

Still, yeah, from what I understand, the bulk of the tariff costs were passed along to customers.

Sure, there might be some wiggle room in some of the margins, and when tariffs were like 10% that might have been something close to “sustainable”, but that doesn’t extrapolate forever. When Trump enacted 125% tariffs on China, they by definition couldn’t eat the cost.