Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...
Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
101–110 of 843 posts
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#102... refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs were passed to. Essentially turning it retroactively into a tax to private businesses. This is the worst case of all scenarios for the consumer.
Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost, it seems pretty impractical to determine who is due a refund - end users or businesses. Or the logistics of refunds to customers. One possibility would be for businesses to return the fraction of the tariff paid by customers to future customers by offering the items affected with a negative tax until the refund is used up.
Maybe this will finally be the impetus for the US to go for a VAT? Hell if we get a carbon based border adjustment tax out of this like people were talking about in Trump’s first term this might be a case of broken clocks.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#103I wonder if brands will have a "tariff refund" sale. Make everything 20% off until all of the brand's tariff refund is passed on to customers. Of course, this wouldn't help the customers that already paid the tariff but it could be a good marketing ploy.
Much more interesting would be if the tariffs were refunded equally to each person nationwide (interesting in that it very clearly then becomes an income redistribution scheme, even if on a limited basis).
Possibly a refund of about $500 per social security number. Doesn't even have to be in cash, could just directly go towards the social security fund if legislated that way.
Tons of ways to fix this quagmire in a way that's beneficial to people. But it won't happen.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. If you think this is smart then you may as well go around clubbing old ladies over their heads, as long as you don't get caught it's like free money right? The alternative is not to forbid companies from selling those rights, the alternative is to undo this deal and pay the whole amount back to those that originally forked it over and…
>It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. Where's the extortion? The "it's a nice shop you got there..." racket only works if you can strongly influence whether the damages occur (ie. you tell your goons to attack the shop, or not). So far as I can tell however, that's not the case, because Trump wanted the tariffs to stay, and was sad that they got revoked. Going back to the…
You think businesses as a rule can all survive a 15 to 100% surcharge on their products without running into liquidity issues?
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#105Cantor Fitzgerald, formerly led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and is now run by his son, went to various companies that were affected by tariffs and bought the rights to their potential tariff refunds for 20% of the value on the expectation that it'd be struck down by the courts. Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being correct on that bet, while, of course, consumers get nothing. Now if this i…
Cantor Fitzgerald is sleezy, but you’ve got the reason wrong. They’re sleezy because they bet against the administration.
But it’s not “insider trading.” They didn’t have insider information on how the courts were going to rule—especially where it was a 6-3 split with three conservatives siding against the administration. And a split in the appellate court as well, with two republican and two democrat appointees siding for the administration.
And Cantor had nothing to do with imposing these tariffs in the first place. Trump loves tariffs. He has been wanting to do these tariffs since the 1980s. He imposed tariffs in his first term and campaigned on imposing them now.
So you’re taking a story about Cantor Fitzgerald displaying disloyalty to Trump and trying to turn it into a “corruption” story that makes no sense.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#106[flagged]
National sales tax would be significantly better than income tax. Per head would be even better
Unfortunately replacement doesn’t seem to be on the table for anyone.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#107[flagged]
How is it mind boggling? It's a regressive tax. That's literally their MO.
They've been pushing the national sales tax to replace income tax since the 2000s (and probably longer).
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could point out the inconsistency, but I really think the cognitive dissonance of constant and pervasive hypocrisy is the point . Truth is whatever the party tells you today, and we have always been at war with EastAsia.
> we have always been at war with EastAsia Isn’t the new line that we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years?
Which happens to be in Asia. Close enough...
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#109Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...
> Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...
What do you mean unclear? The ruling says that certain of the tariffs were always illegal.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#110Cantor Fitzgerald, formerly led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and is now run by his son, went to various companies that were affected by tariffs and bought the rights to their potential tariff refunds for 20% of the value on the expectation that it'd be struck down by the courts. Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being correct on that bet, while, of course, consumers get nothing. Now if this i…
Could you go into detail about what you think happened? The tariffs were public knowledge, and the suits to invalidate them were public knowledge. Are you saying you think the Supreme Court justices secretly communicated to the Commerce Secretary how they intended to rule on the case, far in advance of publishing their ruling?
That would be insane. That would mean people in the government talk to each other and also that they have conversations or make deals behind closed doors or that one or god forbid all of them are corrupt, which is utter nonsense!
Probably just a good guess. At least it wasn't based on intimate knowledge of things based on being in a position extremely close to everyone involved in all of it. Sheesh.