The taco-man theory is that by increasing tariffs, jobs will come to the US and/or if the tariffs are paid, it will bring a flood of money into Treasury, allowing us to reduce or eliminate the income tax.
Embraer manufactures in Brazil. They make only about 70 commercial jets a year for the entire world, so probably 20-30 of them go to US companies. Would Embraer set up a manufacturing plant in the USA just for 25 planes, especially considering that any parts (like engines, avionics, landing gear, seats or whatever) would still be tariffed unless they were made in the USA? This is extremely unlikely, and if they did it, it would probably take 10 years to get it up and running. IOW, they would probably only consider something like that for a next generation of product.
So a tariff doesn't bring any aircraft manufacturing jobs to the US. What about tariff revenues? Well, Alaska Airlines (or American or anybody else) would be paying those tariffs. If the margins in their business are thin, they will be very reluctant to pay this price. They have options. Alaska decided to discontinue service, which means there are no manufacturing jobs, no tariff revenue, and LOST jobs within the airline, and consumers lose a valuable service. No benefit, everything is bad with that option.
They don't have an option to buy from a US maker because Boeing is the only one, and they don't make regional commuter planes. If those routes are really important to Alaska, then I guess they could buy some 737s, but that means they will be running inefficiently if the routes fit the Embraer-sized aircraft
There really is nothing good in any of these scenarios. The best policy is to let Alaska buy the Embraer jets without tariffs so that Alaska will employ more US workers who will pay taxes, and customers will have better travel options. And by the way, every ticket sold on these Embraer flights pays a 7.5% federal excise tax. So we are actually a lot better off with no tariff.
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