Yes. People are that stupid.
I remember seeing a news article about this one woman that sent thousands of dollars to some scammer that pretended to be Brad Pitt. They sent her some hilariously badly photoshopped photos of Brad Pitt in the hospital and she still didn’t catch on. Or she didn’t even bother to like Google if Brad Pitt was actually in the hospital. Scammers don’t want people that can spot a scam, they want people like that woman and boy there are plenty like her out there.
Tarrifs are a type of tax. People are just idiots. They probably realized they could dupe people into accepting a tax increase by just calling it by a different name.