I 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.
Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
221–230 of 843 posts
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#222Absolutely 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….
In terms of policy this is a truly massive gift to importing companies. They had to pay massive amounts of tax to import goods. Analysis shows most (but not all) of the tariffs were passed on down the line to consumers of the imported goods or their derivatives.
And now they get it all back! If they can figure out the paperwork. Which I expect most will, because if you import things and pay tariffs, you have to be good at govt paperwork.
Wow. I don’t know what this means. But it’s a huge windfall to a very specific horizontal slice of the economy - cutting across industries and supply chains. Just whoever happened to be doing the importing gets a giant present. So bizarre. Economists will write about this case study for decades.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#223Earlier 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…
Self-dealing by someone connected to the state, yes. Extortion, no. It takes a fair amount of money to take a court case to the Supreme Court. You can pay it all (and still maybe lose), or you can let the law firm have part of what you win. This happens all the time in the US legal system. It's not extortion; it's essentially venture funding by the law firm. (Yes, I'm aware of the pattern in the previous sentence, bu…
Litigation funding is essentially just another asset class for investors:
https://thehedgefundjournal.com/the-emerging-market-for-liti...
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I'll turn this around: Do you think it is acceptable for policymakers, lawmakers or people involved in such a process to reap profits more or less directly with (partially non-public) knowledge they've acquired? Because I think not. And I feel pretty strongly about this. The conflict of interest is so glaringly obvious that it should be completely self-evident why every voter should want to prevent, ban and punish an…
You mean these policymakers?
“ House kills effort to release all congressional sexual misconduct and harassment reports”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-kills-effort...
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#225Earlier 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? 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…
Trump can profit either way, the key is the insider knowledge to bet for or against them. Admin insiders financially engineered where they profited from refunds.
Any vote towards what the insider information pointed to was a vote 'for' the admin as they had financially engineered their winnings based on that. And meanwhile Trump immediately turned to a new tariff structure. The vote they gave was the strongest vote in favor of the admin insiders they could have given, and meanwhile didn't actually stop Trump from continuing on with the scheme.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.
Source?
Joint Economic Committee a good enough source? https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2...
Or Tax Foundation? https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs...
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#227Cantor 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 type of financialization should be illegal
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#228Earlier 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…
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Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#229I'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.
This answer is the incarnation of capitalismmaxxing. Economically speaking you're correct - but morally definitely not, companies are for the bigger part not the harmed party here.
Re: Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
They literally spent a decent chunk of money spinning up a line of business that could only make money if the tariffs were illegal.