Well aside from the obvious one of $$$$$ for the government.
But for whatever reason other nations are able to raise funds without causing consumer goods from costing 2-3 times more in general than other parts of the world. It also seems to limit variety available, as importers will not gamble on things with a small or unsure market, and in general retards development by limiting consumer access to computers etc.
So what is the reason for this?
In general high tariffs have a lot to do with intentionally retarding trade and availability of goods. It makes domestic providers of those goods (or substitutes) more competitive.
What about goods that have no domestic providers like PCs or cellphones? Or the components even, which are all produced in a limited number of nations worldwide.
Generally speaking, it’s allegedly to “equalize” the competitiveness of foreign imports with domestic products. That’s the story they always give.
In fact, it’s often intended to put domestic trade on an “equal” footing when foreign imports are perceived to have some unfair advantage (like being produced en masse by starving slaves earning $0.02 per month). Or it’s done to give domestic producers some unfair advantage over imports in the domestic market, or an unfair advantage over other nations’ trade in our export markets. Only nobody will ever openly admit that, of course.
Note that the whole business of tariffs and duties lends itself to trade wars, where countries impose tariffs to give their side advantage, whereupon other countries respond with tariffs of there own, leading to an escalating spiral of tariffs. Taken to excess, this can hamper free trade.
This is not just hypothetical. A major real-life example was the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 which raised tariffs to near-historic levels, and has been considered a contributing factor in the Great Depression. From the Wiki lede (and note the mention of tariff wars):
Tariff wars even had a role in the formation of the United States as we now know it. In the days of the Articles of Confederation, even the individual states of the Union levied tariffs on goods imported from one another, leading to trade wars among the states. According to history lessons as I remember learning about it, it got bad. Real bad. It became one of the primary motivations for the Founders to call the Constitutional Convention of 1787, with the stated intent to “amend” the Articles (which they then proceeded to re-write totally from scratch, giving us the Constitution we have now). Our present Constitution has that famous passage assigning Congress and ONLY Congress the power to regulate inter-state trade, exactly because of this.
It’s not dollars for the government, but rather politics for the voters and candidates.
Note that back in the good old days, before the 16th amendment to the US constitution, tariff and import duties were a major source of income for the federal government. So historically, it very much was $$ for the government.
I agree that protectionism, especially back then, was also a major reason, perhaps the primary reason. But the money was important as well.
A major reason is also to limit the flow of cash out of a country. The common example is for importing cars. If a country has no auto industry at all and not a great deal of export income the general populace buying cars is a significant problem, and just that one commodity can cause the local currency to be pushed down hard in response. So rather than let that happen, they impose very high tariffs on cars - 100-200%. The locals can get pretty good at keeping old clunkers on the road in response. Simply a deliberate market distortion with a very specific aim.
I suspect a blanket high tariff could be used for a similar intent. Making everything imported much more expensive has much the same effect as lowering the value of the currency - except for those items the government (or its friends) wants to buy on which it pays no tariff. Then the artificially high value of the local currency wins for them. This is just an idle thought, but it would be interesting to see how it plays.
Ironically, the two examples you have chosen used to have domestic manufacturers, but they were driven out of their markets due to the availability of cheap imports. With no protective tariffs, the domestic manufacturers weren’t able to compete with the overseas labor rates and the overseas lack of environmental regulations.
Why do you assume other nations aren’t doing this?
Developing countries have a tough time collecting personal income tax. Between corruption, the informal economy, outright poverty and general disorganization, it’s just not a viable model. Sales tax suffers from many of the same problems. It’s easy to dodge and easy to siphon off.
But countries only have so many ports, and trade is watched pretty closely for a number of reasons. So taxing imports and exports is one of the more reliable ways to raise the funds that allow a country to keep being a country. In addition, it provides tools for messing with the trade balance to achieve whatever outcomes.
Through the 19th century, the US used tariffs to raise money and to support the growth of domestic manufacture.
Belize has a 30% import tax on everything - including cash.
So I was told by a fellow who thought he could retire there and live comfortably for pennies a day while scoring great weed.
He didn’t last a year.
It’s about money in poorer countries.
In countries with substantial economies, it can be about protecting domestic producers.
Here’s a discussion of the Harley-Davidson Protection Act: