Here we go again. After raising the prices U.S. consumers pay for foreign-produced aluminum, steel, lumber, automotive parts, and dairy products, the "tariff man" rides once more, and this time European goods are in his sights.

The problem, as always, is that tariffs are paid by the people who put him on the path.

Trump, who admits to having a special affection for tariffs and even referred to himself as the "tariff man," is inspired this time by a 2018 World Trade Organization ruling in a U.S.-brought complaint involving Boeing and Airbus-produced airplanes. The U.S. complaint, filed 14 years ago under World Trade Organization procedures, claimed that Europeans were subsidizing world consumption of their own Airbus aircraft.

Of course, the practice is despised by Airbus competitors, such as Boeing, which is able to raise a much louder political voice than a few hundred million unorganized consumers. Still, the subsidies boil down to Europeans helping foreigners buy planes, much like some sort of Santa Claus for adults might do.

Instead of thanking them for their generosity, Trump, in a strange “I’ll show them” moment, indicated that the United States will get even — by penalizing American consumers. In a tweet supporting new tariffs, he said, “The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years.”

The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2019

If providing cheaper aircraft and other goods is taking advantage, maybe we need more of it.

Now that we are being rescued by the Trump administration, we will pay more for European helicopters, textiles, olives, jelly, jam, cutlery, cheese, and more. All the while, due to the untimely death of the Airbus Santa Claus, we’ll also pay more for European-built aircraft. Can this somehow be a new road to prosperity?

How did the European politicians respond? Oddly enough, in kind. To paraphrase, they said if you penalize Americans when they buy our goods, we’ll put a bite on Europeans when they buy American goods.

So now, in a strange game of “I can do anything better than you,” politicians on both sides of the pond have found a way to quietly impoverish their own people by placing tariffs on bundles of consumer goods: ultimately, just taxes on their own country’s consumption of specific products.

But let us not get carried away. After all, relative to the world or even the U.S. or EU economies, the tariffs in question are small potatoes. That said, the cumulative effects of tariffs, no matter how small, are always a step taken away from prosperity.

All of this tit-for-tat tariff targeting is taking place at a time when the United States is engaged in serious trade talks with China as well as with the European Union on other issues, and while a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement awaits congressional approval. Meanwhile, word from the International Monetary Fund tells us that, little wonder, the world economic pulsebeat is slowing.

Sleepwalking economies do not tend to open wider doors to world competition. Indeed, the common response is just the reverse: With jobs threatened by foreign-produced goods, as the argument goes, this is the time to close and deadbolt the doors. That, in turn, reduces even further the pace of economic growth.

In the long run, prosperity hangs in the balance. In the short run, politicians will try to get even by imposing high costs on their voters, somehow justifying their actions by way of bumper sticker nationalism.

Bruce Yandle is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business and Behavioral Science. He developed the "Bootleggers and Baptists" political model.