Tariffs may feel like abstract percentages, but their ripple effects show up in price tags, inventories, and who trades with whom. This sandbox gives you a simplified playground to see those motions at work across three fictional nations: A, B, and C.
Each slider changes a piece of the economic puzzle—domestic supply, local demand, or the tariff that shapes import costs. Adjusting them recalculates equilibrium prices, determines who has surplus or deficit, and animates the trade flows between partners.
Experiment With Trade Dynamics
Start by increasing a tariff in one country and see how the flow lines fade or reroute. Then rebalance by tweaking local production or demand and look for new equilibriums. The legend keeps track of aggregate trade volume for each good.
What To Look For
- Price divergence: Raising demand or tariffs lifts effective prices, making imports less attractive.
- Surplus vs. deficit: Supply greater than demand creates export capacity; the inverse forces imports.
- Tariff feedback loops: Heavy tariffs can chill trade entirely, even if another nation still has surplus.
This is intentionally light-touch economics: no currency exchange, no retaliatory policies, no supply chains. But it captures the directional intuition for how tariffs, production, and appetite compete. Use it as a conversation starter, or as a toy model before diving into more formal analysis.