Yeah, that's probably smarter.

Normally we presume having a proper word for a thing is more descriptive, but in this case because people aren't used to the idea: maybe being more verbose is the answer.

Lots of countries do call them import taxes, or import duties, or just duties.

That’s where the term “duty free” that you see in airports comes from.

But I guess until a certain influential individual started lying about tariffs, this wasn’t really necessary because no one was really confused about who paid the tariffs, because the people who knew about them clearly knew it was the importers paid for them and the people who didn’t understand how they worked had no reason to be confused because everyone who did would clearly explain that importers paid them.

Probably. It would have made it a lot harder to sell to voters.