Tarrifs must be congressional approved first.

Well it's a good thing that Trump bootlickers control both houses of congress as well as the courts they might be challenged in.

Tarrifs must be congressional approved first. That means the bill must be presented, debated on, voted on, then signed.

Unless Congress has already given the president that authority.

In early 2018 President Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This law states that the president can raise tariffs on imports that pose a threat to national security. Section 232 allows the President to implement these tariffs without the approval of Congress, following an investigation by the Department of Commerce. The Commerce Department has noted that threats to national security may include “fostering U.S. dependence on unreliable or unsafe imports” or “fundamentally threatening the ability of U.S. domestic industries to satisfy national security needs.”1

You're assuming that the tariffs exist in a vacuum. They do not.

As soon as vendors feel they can blame Trump/tariffs/whatever and not lose income, they will raise prices. Their costs don't need to actually go up - and if called out, they can say they're just responding to the uncertainty or whatever.

Except they'll jack prices anyway then if the tariffs don't stick they will say it was a precautionary cushion against potential tariffs while collecting the profits.

There are several reason why a President can impose tariffs without congressional approval. If he wants to do them, all he needs is a pretense, regardless how non-credible, and his own pen. Like the 'immigration emergency' that let him loot the military construction budget to build bits of border wall.

That's the biggest thing. More than anything they want us to keep buying, and they want to maximize profit. The guaranteed thing that will happen is they won't do anything that will jeopardize profits. So I'm really curious how much was just politicking, because more than anything they want the public to be dumb with their pocketbooks open.