Leopards Ate My Face

"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.

The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.

"Doing your own research" means watching one or two YouTube videos or Facebook posts as far as these people are concerned. No thought for themselves, just parrot what you hear.

Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.

Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.

and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.

Omg. We’ve come full circle now that smart people are telling idiots to do your own research…

To be fair, economics is not intuitive. Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination. How else would bitcoin even exist? For those of you who are economists and love the money side, vs the behavioral side, that’s great, we need people like you to explain it to the rest of us.

I work with a real system that will still exist no matter what happens with politics or money, so it takes work, for me. That said, tariffs and inflation are not difficult concepts provided you simply take the time to learn.

I know someone who lost their job in December due to tariffs anticipation, and they were not alone in that group of layoffs. The effects are there even if you fail to learn the reasons.

Isn't this the same debate as to how one country can (or cannot) force another country to pay for a random construction project that isn't in anyones interest (that wall)?

It's not like the concept is beyond (basically, 99.9+%) anyones cognitive abilities. It's just how ads (the science behind it is plentiful, it's a giant business sector) work on human brains.

Plot twist: the person writing this is President Musk and the employee he's referring to is Trump.

Doing your own research or, you know, trust the experts? There's no way I will get deep enough into virology to get a proper grasp if I need a vaccination. But I for sure won't trust a random space Karen or brainworm Jimmy.

Of course the employee is wrong, but the OOP isn't tackling the argument in a really productive way. There's an opportunity to meet the employee where they are.

People caught in the right wing noise machine always seem to understand that businesses pass on business taxes to the consumer. So, if other countries were paying the tariffs, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?

The whole thing was very purposefully talked about using the word "tariff" and never ever its synonym "import tax" exactly so that the traditional Fascist technique of redefining the meaning of words could be easily used: if all the Fascists' speech had been about "import taxes" they would not have been able to leverage most people's ignorance anywhere near this level because the very words "import" and "tax" were already reasonably well understood by most - unlike "tariff" - so the opinion makers would not have been able to miseducate their targets anywhere as easily.

I'm not saying that the people who fell for this are to be excused - if there is something important enough for you to put the effort into educating yourself, it's Politics - I'm saying it's understandable how so many were so easy to swindle.