And of course people are still selling to the US. From our perspective nothing has changed. It's not costing us any more than it did before.
Markets remain up, bolstered partly by the AI stocks, but also because the market believes US consumers will continue to consume. Their appetite for consumption, and debt, remains unabated.
Am I building a factory in the US? No. The current administration makes that very unappealing. The US society is unstable right now, policy is fluid, enforcement of laws seems weak, the labor market is (justifiably) paranoid. As a foreigner I'm not even traveling to the US anytime soon. There are other, more appealing, opportunities to explore.
This suits large importers over small ones, they have the cash reserves to cope.
The other issue for importers is uncertainty. The tarifs might be high this week (when my stock arrives) but it might be low next week when my competitors stock arrives, putting me at a disadvantage.
So "shelves being bare" is primarily a business risk / cash flow issue. Partly handled with more frequent, smaller, orders (driving up consumer prices some more.)
And yes, I agree, most American consumers don't understand that fundamentally the goal of tarifs (good and bad) is to drive up the price. To that end though the administration is being very successful.
> The exporters aren't impacted directly at all
This isn't true, at least if you believe in standard economic theory (not believing standard economic theory is what got us in this mess!).
The issue is that the tariff increases the effective price to the consumer, so it shifts the demand curve downward by the cost of the tariff (the price consumers are willing to pay the producer for a given quantity of goods).
Markets always find their equilibrium, and the resulting equilibrium point is a lower transaction price and lower quantity than before. Quantifying the shift requires knowing both the supply and demand elasticities.
In other words, both the producer and consumer share the burden of the tariffs. The producer receives less from the consumer, and the consumer pays a higher total cost than before. Who pays more of the tariff is question that we again need the elasticities to answer.
But that's not what people think: People think the tarrifs work like a bill from the US government - like taxes, where they understand it's possible (though again, generally not how) to wind up owing the government more money in September.
What they imagine is very clearly something that looks like that - that companies directly pay some fee to access the US market and then sell things as normal. Or will be taxed some extra money after selling things to the US.
Yes it's all wildly inconsistent on the slightest inspection, but people are relating to this on a vibes level and then generally inventing the justification post facto because they certainly never thought about tarrifs till this president.
There will absolutely be some short term pain. But in the long run it makes the producer stronger.
Now it's easy to cherry pick products that are easier to move than others. There absolutely will be winners and losers on the production side. It'll certainly be interesting to see this play out.
Access to the US market has other values. If the manufacturer is carrying USD denominated debt, they or someone else must obtain those dollars through trade. Access to a large market may unlock economies of scale for producers. Losing access may drive up their overall costs to serve other markets.
These are just two of the most obvious things which I can immediately think of. There are likely other factors as well.