Out of respect for you and the fact that you seem to be the sole representative of your side of the aisle (on this board) who hasn't lost your marbles and has the capacity for rational thought, I will concede that the definition you've provided is solid. A tax is "compulsory"...which is exactly what differentiates it from a tariff. The EU and much of the rest of the world have already demonstrated just exactly how this is so. The tariffs they have on our goods are so high that their citizens choose not to buy them. The tariff stands there blocking their access to goods they might otherwise want, but that they are not required to buy.
Your friend in VA has the option to NOT buy the tins from Canada. She can find a U.S. distributor (such as Uline), she can change the type of pie pan she uses (e.g. recyclable cardboard, plastic, etc.), or she can look for recycled pie pans/tins (my own mother could probably supply her with several dozen). Whichever way she goes, there is no compulsory requirement for her to buy her tins from Canada.
As for the U.S. demand question... that will ultimately drive the price of U.S. made pie tins down, not up. The greater the demand, the higher the volume of production, the higher the volume of production, the lower the cost of materials (buying in bulk ALWAYS drives the price down as the distributor circumvents many of the problems associated with small orders such as lost margins on things like shipping materials), the lower the cost of materials, the lower the cost to the end user.
For example, one of the many pharmaceutical containers that my father patented and then manufactured was an item called the 7Pack (China did go on to steal it eventually and now you can buy them for nothing on Alibaba and similar shlock sites). When sold individually, they ran about 12 dollars a piece. When sold to pharmacies in small bulk volume, the price dropped to approximately half. When sold to Walgreen's and Healthcare Logistics, the price dropped to about a buck and change per piece. Why? Because the labor to set up and produce 500 pieces wasn't much different than that required to produce 5,000. Additionally, when he purchased the materials required for production from his distributors, the cost of those materials dropped dramatically on very large orders for the same reason.
So, in sum, if you step back and consider all of this at a second or third order level of thought, you will probably be able to at least see the appeal of the current tariff situation to those of us who have lived our whole lives on the manufacturing/production side of things.
P.S. For what it's worth, both Walgreen's and Healthcare Logistics continued to buy from him right up until the day he dissolved the company at age 80, despite China's theft and low low prices.
