Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 843 posts

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

#371

Post by theptip »

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 reading I’ve done elsewhere suggests that it’s far from a done deal that companies will be able to extract refunds from the government. For example if doing so offends Trump and causes him to try to extract concessions elsewhere. Or if the government simply drags their feet on various ways.

“Trump’s buddy’s son offers 20c/$” does not seem like a terrible deal for getting your money out.

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

#372

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rootusrootus wrote: post #115
NickC25 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to mention that Mr. Lutnik is also a close personal friend of a pedophile-turned-Mossad-agent-turned-pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island. Mr. Lutnik deliberately and purposefully lied to congress about it, and faced no charges for lying to congress. In a just world, someone like that would be jailed indefinitely and made to publicly take stand about his activities, and called out to his…

Yeah that’s never going to happen. Nobody in this administration will ever be under oath on the topic. Now they suddenly think Slick Willie is trustworthy because he said he had know knowledge of Trump doing anything wrong. What a world.

Presumably you don't consider a House panel to be under oath (since Lutnick, a part of this administration, will be appearing before one) ?

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

parineum wrote: post #287
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…

> People without a college degree went Trump 56-43. People with a college degree went for Harris 56-42. One made more promises to the poor and working class. It seems baked into your comment that the distribution should be 50-50 which seems crazy. A swing of ~5 points isn't that much. This math would work on any demographic.

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by syllogism »

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 corruptions of this administration are legion, but this isn't one of them. Unless you can point to something Lutnick did to create this outcome, I don't see how he had a better view of the whole thing than anyone else.

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

#375

Post by flawn »

siliconc0w wrote: post #180

SCOTUS is entirely to blame for the chaos here, the courts quickly found the tariffs illegal but they used the shadow docket to stay the ruling causing the illegal behavior to continue for a year.

To blame in a second order but this is the admin's work overall, they shouldn't have tried to fund their PACs and pocket this money into their family & friends' bank accounts. Just shows how broken the system is.

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

#376

Post by Ajakks »

rayiner wrote: post #264
burkaman wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re piling speculation on speculation. First of all, there was no such memo saying the tariffs were “very likely to be overturned.” The Supreme Court decision was 7-3, with two Bush appointees voting to uphold the tariffs. The appellate court decision was 7-4, with two Obama appointees and two Bush appointees dissenting. Second of all, there is no evidence that this legal analysis was leaked to Cantor.

Who cares? The Treasury Secretary shouldn't have family profiting off fixing illegal policy the Treasury Secretary enacted. That should never happen. It is wrong, it doesn't explicitly spelled out.

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

#377

Post by hollywood_court »

microtonal wrote: post #308
trymas wrote: post #256

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…

Sounds like the opposite of trickle down economics.

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

#378

Post by loudmax »

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.

The mental gymnastics people are performing in order to convince themselves that this isn't the most corrupt administration the US has seen in modern history is staggering.

If a fraction of the level of skepticism these people applied to Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton were applied to Trump and his cronies, they'd be demanding impeachment.

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

#379

Post by vntok »

jstummbillig wrote: post #323
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.

Cool! How much money did you yourself make on this (given that it was entirely obvious, and not leveraging knowledge seems silly)?

Why would you assume the parent would have both a betting addiction and enough side money available to make it worthwhile?
Post reply on HN