Trump promised voters tariffs are a panacea for the economy, but Walmart finance chief John David Rainey warned they will be inflationary for customers.
In their minds, they literally think of them as some sort of "cover charge" that foreign manufacturers pay to get their goods into the US, and that they will do so gladly and neither seek other places to sell nor raise their prices. They think that these companies will eat the losses until they decide to build factories in the US, or they will simply wither away and American factories will sprout up like dandelions in a sidewalk.
The fact that all of it is completely wrong doesn't matter, because the people telling them otherwise don't have on a red hat and an ill-fitting suit.