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

wsj.com

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

#171

Post by ranyume »

benrutter wrote: post #119

Lots of comments along the lines that tarrifs were mostly passed down indirectly to consumers, who aren't entitled to refunds. I definitely agree on principle, it sounds pretty tricky to see how proving "I paid $x more for groceries because of tarrifs" would work in practice. Does anyone know of policy suggestions for how that could work?

You put the money on an investment pool and pay the citizens back in:

* Direct Cash (using some equation for impoverished households)

* Infrastructure

* Better life conditions

No other uses for this money. The returns and the uses of this money must be public.

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

#172

Post by throwaway667555 »

jonlucc wrote: post #160
throwaway667555 wrote: post #92

I'm gonna have a stroke. The Congressional Budget Office found that consumers paid 70-80% of the tariffs, totaling more than $1000 per household. Where is my refund?

In practice, the entities who gave money directly to the US government are the ones who paid the tariff. Those entities should be pressured to refund the consumers, but in practice, that's unlikely. I (unknowingly) ordered something on Etsy from another country. UPS delivered the items, then sent me a letter requiring I pay the tariff and an extra tariff handling fee. UPS paid the government, so UPS should get their…

Economically it is a direct redistribution of wealth. In crisis times, Congress acts swiftly to cure wrongs against corporations. What about this wrong against every single household?

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

#173

Post by mrwh »

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…

The executive class are out to get as much as they can as quickly as they can while the music plays, then retire to whatever luxury boltholt they can prepare. It's FIRE with private islands, and without even a figleaf of noblesse oblige any more.

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

#174

Post by cvoss »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #92

I'm gonna have a stroke. The Congressional Budget Office found that consumers paid 70-80% of the tariffs, totaling more than $1000 per household. Where is my refund?

You did not pay the tariffs. You bore the cost of the tariffs. Those are not the same thing. The refund is due to the party that got the bill for the tariff and paid it-- the importer. What you paid for was for the business not to go bankrupt while this was occurring. If the business wants to refund you for that, they can choose to do so. But you are not owed a refund.

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

#175

Post by estearum »

general_reveal wrote: post #123
estearum wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'll entertain it. How would you distinguish between the brilliant move of using illegal tariffs to disclose limited power and appetite for tariffs, versus someone displaying a 3rd grader level of economic understanding and saying "well of course we should charge people to sell stuff in 'my store' and I am now the manager of 'the store', so I get to set the rate"? What specific pieces of evidence do you believe…

Why would China immediately retaliate with a Rare Earth threat to tariffs? Why would we threaten Greenland, another rare earth hotbed? We , the general public , similar to the Cuban Missile crisis, are not being told shit. There is a global cold/hot war where real pieces have moved. NATO is basically at war and we can’t know. There’s millions dying in Ukraine, and it’s basically Eurasia to us (virtualized, reported ,…

> Few are ready to live under 24 hour nuclear watch, but it’s possible that’s what many cities have been under and can never be told.

Effectively every city on the planet is perpetually on 24 hour nuclear watch and has been for decades now. This is completely "known" to anyone who cares to know and has taken the time to understand modern nuclear doctrine.

You should read The Doomsday Machine! It'll help amp up your anxiety ;)

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

#176

Post by gruez »

seydor wrote: post #137
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?

Did they know it was illegal? Any more than say, the Biden administration "knew" that forgiving student loans were illegal?

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

#177

Post by mothballed »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #132
indoordin0saur wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

.... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You think the people appointing them didn't have internal deliberations before they were appointed, including about things Trump had thought about like tariffs? Even FDR knew the 'separation' was a farce, that's how he magically got the court to go along with progressive programs they prior didn't support, after the 'Switch in time that saved nine.'

SCOTUS largely functions as a post-facto legitimization machine for those that appoint them. They do not interpret the constitution so much as serve as god-people in funny costumes that provide the cultural message from god that the actions of their political persuasion were legal (or illegal) even in cases where a historical and literal reading of the constitution would otherwise find you with no way to find them legitimate if not for man in black robe say so.

------ re: "2 of 3" below due to throttling--------

A vote to refund here was not a vote against the admin, it was a vote to simplify the laundering of the tax. It was a vote to put the money straight into the coffers of admin insiders like Lutnick et al financial engineering scheme. Meanhwile it did not invalidate tariffs, as Trump immediately pivoted to a different tariff structure.

As a second note, the profit here was actually not dependent nearly as much on the vote as the insider information. The fact the best any rebuttal can come up with is the vote might have been 'wrong' is basically totally defaulting to the insider trading element which means you are totally yielding the underlying premise.

That is, the only 'vote' against the admin in this case would be one that went against their insider information. Failure to note this is how the justices and admin have swindled you and the public. The very posing of this comment of rayiner et al reveals how they tricked you.

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

#178

Post by lenerdenator »

philipov wrote: post #169
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging. People who work in finance aren't allowed to trade the same stocks as their company is trading, whether they have any inside info or not. The assumption is that simply by being close to a source of information, you are compromised. The same restrictions should apply to those close to government. By being family, he is compromised by default.

> In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging.

It was damaging.

In 2015.

And then for a bit between 2021 and 2024.

Now it's not again.

You have to enforce these sorts of gentlemen's agreements. Just saying "it's damaging" isn't enough to actually make it damaging.

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

#179

Post by myrmidon »

tt24 wrote: post #106
hypeatei wrote: post #7

[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.

Better for whom? Wealthy people?

If your argument is that taxation at sale is harder to dogdge than with income, and thus an obviously regressive scheme would still be advantageous for the average American, then I'm not buying it at all.

I see no evidence whatsoever that the wealthy would have any more difficulty in dodging sales tax than income/capital gains taxes.

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