Other countries produce a huge amount of matcha. People simply want to buy Japanese matcha. While I don't consume it regularly, I would prefer Japanese matcha as well. Perhaps this situation will cause pressure to improve foreign matcha production.
4,608 karma · joined June 12, 2014
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development
Until you get to extremely high-end goods this multiplier system works fairly well to accommodate the various costs the business has. It is an assumption that there are many business costs that scale linearly with sale price. In reality not all do, but there are many: insurance, return costs, loss, and customer service expectations all scale with dollar values.
Edit: if we switched from an import tariff to a foreign goods sales tax we could avoid this particular problem.