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

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

#141

Post by matthewdgreen »

koolba wrote: post #118
jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

How is it extortion? They could have gotten a different deal from anybody else or no deal at all. Nobody was twisting there arm or forcing them to deal with this one company to sell their tariff claims.

If two companies come to you with an offer to sell the refunds, and one has strong ties to a central figure in the administration — which can, in the future, subject or exempt you from new tariffs and otherwise use the Federal government’s powers to mess with you - are you truly free to choose either offer? Or is there a risk and a benefit to taking the one that’s tied to the administration? (And frankly, can you even be certain either way?) This kind of conflict (even the appearance of this kind of conflict) is why we generally don’t want government officials or their families to be profiting directly off the policies they oversee. It is at best unseemly, and that’s being kind.

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

#142

Post by wutwutwat »

mhb wrote: post #28
mothballed wrote: post #4

... 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.

That's not how capitalism works. Consumers ate the cost. Have you not bought anything in the last year?

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

#143

Post by pkilgore »

ModernMech wrote: post #57
chuckadams wrote: post #14

Earlier 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?

Even better "imminent" war with Iran.

For 47 years.

Imminent.

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

#144

Post by whyenot »

just-working wrote: post #12
hypeatei wrote: post #7

[flagged]

It's really more complicated than this. Onshoring manufacturing is something that has to be incentivized and that has positive externalities outside of dollars and cents. But some tariffs were really dumb, like on bananas. We can't grow bananas here...

> We can’t grow bananas here…

We can’t? Are south Florida, southern California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, are they not “here”? There is literally a banana variety called California Gold.

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

#145

Post by spamizbad »

petcat wrote: post #53
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

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.

You don't need a crystal ball to understand a conservative supreme court would require the government to refund what amounts to an illegal tax on American businesses. If you stick your hand into a fire you don't need to speculate as to whether you'll get burned.

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

#146

Post by freetonik »

There was an interesting case in Finland. Finnish customs used to apply a 22% tax (ELV) on top of the car tax for imported used cars from other EU countries. On top of that, Finnish law required VAT to be charged on the car tax itself.

There were multiple court cases and this practice was found unlawful (and actually against EU law). But the government did not issue automatic refunds, and instead requested that people "actively appeal" with some time limits. They also refused to pay interest on the money withheld.

AFAIK, only about 50M Euro was paid back. A lot of funds gathered between 2002–2005 was never returned.

I've been living in Finland for 10+ years, and this whole story was super surprising for me to learn because the prevailing notion among people here is that Finland is the land of law, and everything is done correctly and legally, always, and we can and should trust the authorities.

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

#147

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jtbayly wrote: post #89
jerf wrote: 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 (IIRC) the Supreme Court did not order that the tariffs be refunded. They left that issue open in their decision. So jerf may well be right.

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

#148

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

barelysapient wrote: post #44
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

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 assumes companies would have refunded consumers. Obviously if a company did this, refunding consumers was the last thing on their mind.

Best case consumers may be refunded for tariffs directly charged to them by shipping companies like FedEx and DHL (USPS too, but can you really see them having the competence to do this?!).

What consumers will presumably never be refunded for are the increased prices they've been paying for imports of any kind (from Walmart, Amazon, grocery store) where someone else was the importer.

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

#149

Post by mindslight »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #82
hypeatei wrote: post #7

[flagged]

What was the tax rate if you bought things made in the US with US materials?

The same as the tax rate on a blessing of unicorns that I also couldn't buy.

Our domestic manufacturing industry is so far gone, it's doubtful whether even skillfully-applied tariffs could encourage any of it to come back on their own. Never mind this clown show, which apparently didn't even do the basic political work to make sure the tariffs would stay in place more than a year, despite having both houses of Congress.

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

#150

Post by jerf »

jtbayly wrote: post #89
jerf wrote: 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).

As sibling says, the Court very definitely did not order them to refund anything. They could have, and they didn't. The Court knew from the beginning that this was coming back to them.

You may see other judges rule that the refunds don't have to be paid, for any of several reasons. Whatever your desired outcome is, none of it matters until this gets to the Supreme Court. Given the nature of money, it doesn't even matter if some higher court refuses to give an injunction against the refunds being issued until after the appeal is considered and some set of refunds goes all the way through... no company that gets any money from a pre-SC refund can really use it until the entire matter is resolved at the SC level.

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