http://www.mhhe.com/economics/pugel12e/keygraph/keygraph2m.jpg
Take a look at this image. For country to be importin g a product, that must mean that the price charged by a foreign country is less than the price charged by home firms in equilibrium. A tariff will cause the price of all products, regardless of the seller, to rise by the amount of the tariff. When this happens, area A turns from consumer surplus to producer surplus, area C turns from consumer surplus to government revenue, and area b and d move from consumer surplus to nothing, this is the dead-weight loss. Home businesses will gain, foreign businesses will be hurt, government will gain, consumers will lose more than businesses and government gain. This will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS happen no matter how you change up the scenario. If this is the only tariff put in place, then b and d is the dead-weight loss. If the foreign country retaliates with a tariff of their own, then a new b+d dead-weight loss will be created and so on. The more counter-tariffs produced, the more the countries harm their own citizens.
Apple deciding what price to sell and how many to sell is an entirely unrelated topic, but to clear it up, they will sell where their marginal revenue equals their marginal cost because that will always lead to profit maximization for any firm. The price will be whatever point on the demand curve this quantity corresponds with. Profit margins will result from this process but aren't used during it.
""The proper thing should have been to use the U.N. to enter the country if humanitarian issues were afoot."
NO. If Nigeria had done THAT, they'd still be dependent on a foreign country to feed their people!
"All that was done was to replace one wrong with another. If tariffs were needed to help producers survive, that means the population could previously obtain food easier from trade."
yes, right up until those foreign producers started abusing their influence by demanding political favors or else they'd increase prices on food, starving the population. self-sufficiency is best."
I'm actually 100% for free basic food and basic housing being offered to any citizen who needs it, with the U.N. filling in when a country could not uphold its commitments, so being dependent on food from another country would never be an issue if I were deciding what gets done and what doesn't. But, that would be my solution, not tariffs.