Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by semiquaver » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

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…

  > Now if this isn't insider trading (by the literal Commerce Secretary), I don't know what is.

I agree that you don’t know what insider trading is.

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

#212

Post by rayiner » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #122

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 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.

What’s happening is that the deal stinks, and people aren’t precisely analyzing exactly why it stinks so they’re just using it to confirm their priors.

The deal stinks because Cantor bet against the administration that its former head is a part of, and against the signature policy of the president its former head serves.

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

#213

Post by nebula8804 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

tegiddrone wrote: post #159

Herring wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at or below Level 1 literacy, indicating significant difficulty with everyday reading tasks. https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-fac... You guys are surrounded by other college-educated SWE, you have no idea how bad it is out there. People without a college degree went Trump 56-43. People with a college degree went for Harris 56-42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

Yeah, it is an interesting bubble to be in. I worked with a company that could not keep up with the rising SWE salaries and thus attracted a different kind of SWE. I definitely felt the difference in education with the new hires. Reading comprehension/attention was weak. AI will easily replace them, I guess. Finding the data on this would be convenient but its still unclear to me. I'm not a fan of how that article fr…

>I worked with a company that could not keep up with the rising SWE salaries and thus attracted a different kind of SWE.

Maybe im misunderstanding you but I would think that any level of SWE skill would be a minimum amount of competence such that they wouldn't fall for Trumps tricks? SWE is rearranging bits accordance to logic...so you need to know logic no?

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

#214

Post by mothballed » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #206

mothballed wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.... 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…

> .... 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? Following that logic, it make sense that those 3 voted with the administration. Oh wait...

I don't see how a vote against is a vote against the administration. The whole point here is their corruption machine profited more off the justices voting against the tariff and for refunds. The tariffs were a mechanism to feign a tax for public purpose but then 'refund' them turning it into a tax to private business and Lutnick's financial engineering. Funneling the money straight into corrupt private enterprise via 'refund' is even easier for Trump than having to launder it through public coffers.

The key is whether they had insider information given their association with these justices.

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

#215

Post by SunshineTheCat » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #127

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #117

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.

Tariffs don't work like that.

These are taxes that businesses have to pay and as a result, they pass on to the consumer.

Larger companies have some room (in some cases) to absorb some of these costs. While smaller companies do not. These can literally put people out of business overnight.

Here is a specific example: https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/idaho-business-owner-c...

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

#216

Post by bell-cot » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

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…

> ...bought the rights to their potential tariff refunds for 20% of the value...

So - with umpteen $billion on the line, and all the big-shot lobbyists and Washington insiders and experts that all those huge companies had on payroll to advise them - they decided to sell at 20 cents on the dollar.

Theory: When the far-smarter-than-us money bets big, they might know the actual odds.

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

#217

Post by UltraSane » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

duxup wrote: 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….

There is no excuse for how long it took the Supreme court to decide this very obvious case.

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

#218

Post by irishcoffee » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #177

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump.

You can blame RBG for one of those. It fascinates me that Biden made the same mistake RBG did, I’ll always wonder how different the would would be if she had stepped down and the democratic party had held a real primary.

I don’t like trump, I think he stinks. The democratic party has a few own-goals in this current game.

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

#219

Post by gruez » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #177

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>.... 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?

Given that the 2/3 justices appointed by Trump voted against the tariffs, what's the implication here? That Trump deliberately picked anti-tariff justices just so he can engage in a rube goldberg plan to enact tariffs, buy tariff refunds on the cheap, and then have them revoked?

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

#220

Post by burkaman » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 3:28 PM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #122

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 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.

He presumably did not have access to the court's opinion before it was released, but he did have access to internal White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced ("Mr. President this is illegal and very likely to be overturned by the courts"), and he obviously had access to the entire federal legal team during the court cases.

I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information? It seems the same as a corporate insider dumping stock because a company lawyer privately told them "we're definitely going to lose this case".