Does Trump really not understand how tariffs work?

It's no secret that Donald Trump loves tariffs. "To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it's my favourite word", he said in a Bloomberg interview (and many other times). I wonder if he knows that "tariff" actually comes from an Arabic word, via Italian. Probably not.

I wonder though if it's possible that he doesn't actually understand how tariffs work. He must have had economists explain it to him, surely, and economists agree that tariffs are costly and would not generate the benefits that Trump claims for them. 

However, as he reiterated during his inauguration, Trump appears to believe that imposing tariffs on imports benefits Americans financially: "Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens". 

Except that's not how tariffs work, as any economist could tell him. A tariff levied on imported goods is borne by the domestic company that imports the goods, not the foreign company that exports them. That company would then charge consumers more to compensate - few, if any, companies will voluntarily take a hit to their bottom line and NOT raise consumer prices - making the goods more expensive for (in this case) American consumers, increasing inflation in the process.

For good measure, the USA already has a very similar example of the ill-advised imposition of tariffs from nearly 100 years ago, from which to learn. In 1930, under President Herbert Hoover, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act imposed 20% tariffs on a broad spectrum of goods, against the advice of hundreds of American economists, employing broadly similar arguments to Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, we know how that one turned out. It triggered a global trade war and retaliatory tariffs, the stock market crashed, US exports fell by two-thirds, unemployment tripled, inflation spiked, and the 1929 recession tipped into a full-blown depression. Oops.

So, what gives? Did Trump manage to find an economist that would tell him what he wants to hear, rather than the truth? That's certainly plausible, but weird. Maybe he just doesn't understand what he's being told, or just prefers to "go with his gut"? Also plausible, but also weird. 

I'm not really expecting Trump to re-evaluate his gut feeling; that's not the way he rolls. But it will be interesting to see just how badly it goes.