What is a tariff and who actually pays the tariff?

It really seems that lots of Americans really have no idea what a tariff is or who pays the cost of tariffs.A tariff is a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.As il Donald uses it it is the former form of taxation.A tariff simply adds to the cost of an imported item.But who pays taxes?The secondary form of tariff is what other nations use in response to il Donalds tariffs. When il Donald applies tariffs on imported Chinese goods the US consumer pays the tax. When China imposes tariffs on US agricultural products the US famers simply loose the income from their fields. To help keep the farm vote il Donald then raises subsidies to give the farmers and US taxpayers pay those subsidies.There is a secondary factor regarding tariffs. If China stops buying US cars and US agriculture it encourages China to develop their own agriculture and factory capabilities. The same goes for Mexico. Remember both China and Mexico can sell products to any nation on the earth. The US is convenient but certainly not essential.So it seem that it will be US citizens that will pay the taxes called tariffs as well as suffer the economic hardship of markets lost for each and ever utterly stupid tariff il Donald decides to impose on US citizens.(No idea where it should go.)

But world-wide the number of consumer markets are increasing so it's possible those sales will simply go to the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe ...

Except the Chinese economy has a larger internal growth potential than the US internal growth potential. And China can also turn to Russia and India and South East Asia and Iraq and Iran and Pakistan and England and France and Germany and Italy and Brazil and Argentina, and ... as potential places to sell Chinese goods or buy oil.

They are also resource rich in both people and materials. They have an internal growth potential similar to the US at the turn of the 20th Century.And a totalitarian led industrial society is nearly unstoppable.