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Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

wsj.com

131–140 of 843 posts

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#131
post #96

Absolutely absurd that we’re at this point. The courts / SCOTUS let the government roll out a massive and obviously illegal tax on citizens for a long time. They should have stepped in earlier. Now we the people probably don’t get our money back….

I suspect that money is involved. We’re becoming numb to it.

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#132
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it insider trading to bet on a Supreme Court verdict? It's not like it was a slam dunk. The decision was 6-3.

Yeah, because he's the son of the commerce secretary, so (supposedly) has access to the internal deliberations within the government.

No, because "the government" isn't one blob. The court system is separate from the administration. And the supreme court justices aren't giving the internal deliberations to someone in the administration, especially when the administration is one of the parties in the case.

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#133

Cantor 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 lost most of its staff in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Lutnick sued American Airlines, eventually settling for $135 million [1]. He claimed this would largely go to the family of hte victims.

Turns out most (if not all) of it went to the senior executive team, wtih himself being the primary beneficiary [2].

This is also the same Howard Lutnick who the DoJ accidentally released a photo of with Jeffrey Epstein [3]. People noticed and they removed it. People noticed that too so they restored it.

Just so we're all clear who Howard Lutnick is.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/busine.ss/judge-approves-ame...

[2]: https://x.com/FinanceLancelot/status/2022877480516813077

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/howard-lutni...

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#134
post #53

Cantor 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…

Is it insider trading to bet on a Supreme Court verdict? It's not like it was a slam dunk. The decision was 6-3.

I'm shocked you can't see how this is a potential conflict of interest. You don't need to know the exact outcome of the SC decision to have confidence that things will land in your favor. There are certainly all kinds of high level discussions with legal experts in the White House that could have hinted this outcome as likely. The real question is whether there's any personal involvement still with Cantor or this was something launched without influence. If there was influence though, there will of course be denials and bold-face lying (just like with the Epstein involvement).

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#135
post #89
post #70

None of this matters; this is guaranteed to go to the Supreme Court. Too much money, too much precedent. The only thing being established now is the battleground as the procedure of getting up to the Supreme Court. The actual rulings on the way up to the Supreme Court are of minimal consequence.

The Supreme Court already invalidated the tariffs. That’s the context of this order (and the subtitle of the article).

But they didn't say anything about refunding them and you can bet Trump will oppose that and ask the SCOTUS to decide on it. They of course have an option to take their time to render the decision and then just dismiss the case without a comment.

That's what the GP likely meant.

The circus must go on.

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#136
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commerce secretary has no control over what the Supreme Court does. Anyone could have read the law and decided whether they thought the tariffs were legal or not.

The commerce secretary has in this case a huge conflict of interest in pushing for these illegal policies in the first place

The commerce secretary wasn't the one pushing for them in the first place. The president was.

I mean, look, there's plenty of conflicts of interest, and stuff that sure looks like graft, and claims of people making insane amounts of money off of stuff. But in this case, the commerce secretary's options were 1) do the tariffs or 2) get fired. Minion? Sure. Minion without the self-respect or ethics to quit when they were being told to do unconstitutional stuff? Also sure. Pushing these policies, as though they had agency in the matter? No.

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#137

Cantor 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…

This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't have inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who read the case knew which way the court was going, it was the least surprising decision ever. Perhaps the only surprising thing is that the court ever heard it.

is it not a conflict of interest if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#138
post #27
post #7

[flagged]

Eliminate income tax and replace with flat sales tax is a libertarian-conservative policy goal for some time

Anything flatter than a progressive tax means, by definition, that the poor will pay more, and the rich less.

I suppose that sounds pretty good if you're rich.

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#139
post #7

[flagged]

It's such an old and standard and basic playbook. They cultivated fear among the poor about immigrants or some bit of social progress like pronouns. To win power and take whatever actions they believed would enrich themselves. There's never anything more to it than that.

illegal immigrants are taking jobs from legal immigrants. thats why so many hispanic and black voters defected from the democrats lately

Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.

Did they actually raise prices, though? I haven't noticed any significant jumps; my understanding was that they were absorbing (for the most part) the tariffs for the time being, but planned to raise prices in the near future.

Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.
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