351–360 of 843 posts
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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.
But he does know that Trump had no plan to contest the supreme court or make new laws
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No, it's not a conflict of interest. It's perhaps dumb, or morally bad, or several other things.
> dumb, or morally bad This is easy to say in hindsight. There was a non-zero chance the decision could have went the other way. Also, companies aren't stupid. They don't buy insurance against things that are impossible. And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100% obviously illegal.
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You're saying Trump doesn't want tariffs? And the SCOTUS judges who went on record supporting executive powers to tariff was all just a big insider trading scam? And corporations were willing to risk a hundred of billions in tariffs fees on the odds it might get refunded just because some finance company might get a small cut of refunds?
To clarify, POTUS being short for the group POTUS in-crowd of the actual POTUS and cabinet, who act in sync. I'm saying the public tide shifted and the legal reality set in that they weren't going to get sympathetic rulings...which they don't care about anyway since it's not their money and the tariff threats already had any desired effects sought. POTUS was floated the idea that they could enrich themselves, so the…
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How is it mind boggling? It's a regressive tax. That's literally their MO. They've been pushing the national sales tax to replace income tax since the 2000s (and probably longer).
Whether or not these schemes would work is debatable, but to claim that they show an MO of regressive taxes is just false.
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The "Importer of Record" gets the refund. I read that a large fraction of those importer of record are Chinese companies.
read from where? Because over 92% of tariff costs were born by domestic importers. Thats american companies who then offload that tax through higher purchasing costs. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is...
What got my attention on this was this HN comment by rstuart4133:
"There are Non-Resident Importers, which are foreign companies that import goods into the USA, but do not have a presence in the United States. About 15% of USA imports come through NRIs. For them this reversal sets up a true irony. Trump effectively forced US citizens to pay more the imported goods. He thought that money would go to the USA treasury. Now the US treasury has to pay it back, so it is a free gift to the exporting countries. Like China. Truly delicious."
Side topic, but this number puts into how crazy it was for trump[0] to go on tariff war against enemies and friends alike. All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA. Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ? $7T of spending, $1.77T in deficit[1] and they planned to fix this hole with $100B?! M…
Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ? Maybe that was never the point. You present it as retaliation against 'countries that are out to get us'. Introduce the tariffs, companies pay the tariffs by increasing prices for consumers, get the inevitable loss in court, return the tariff money to the companies. You just transferred $130B of w…
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….
> probably Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.
The importers pay the tariffs, and they might get a refund, but it's unlikely they can distribute the money back to the people who they passed the price increase onto.
Imagine I imported 1 ton of rice and paid the tariff. Then I split that ton of rice into 2000 one pound bags and sold them to two super markets, with a higher price accounting for the tariff. Then one super market decided to absorb the price from their margins and sell it at the same price as before to avoid price shocks. Can I track down the other 1000 purchasers who paid a higher price? Is it even worth it?
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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 tariff…
White House legal opinions aren't any better than other legal opinions. Opinions are not "information".
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.