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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

#451

Post by doom2 »

wat10000 wrote: post #335
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….

Congress needs to step up and take its power back from the executive. There was no good reason for the President to have this power in the first place. Why the hell do we have emergency powers to impose tariffs? Is there going to be a fleet of nuclear-armed bombers headed for the USA and the only way to stop them is to impose tariffs? It's ridiculous. Congress has been gradually handing their power over to the execut…

Just wait until the next Democratic president is elected. The current crop of Republicans will suddenly remember that Congress can exercise this power.

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

#452

Post by eszed »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #141
koolba wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it extortion? They could have gotten a different deal from anybody else or no deal at all. Nobody was twisting there arm or forcing them to deal with this one company to sell their tariff claims.

If two companies come to you with an offer to sell the refunds, and one has strong ties to a central figure in the administration — which can, in the future, subject or exempt you from new tariffs and otherwise use the Federal government’s powers to mess with you - are you truly free to choose either offer? Or is there a risk and a benefit to taking the one that’s tied to the administration? (And frankly, can you eve…

Thank you. Yes, this is the reason to be concerned. Not because it's extortion, or anything else like that, but because having to evaluate a counterparty's degree of connection to the State before doing a deal is not the way that free enterprise or open markets are supposed to work. Lutnik Jr's involvement puts every other bidder for these contracts at a disadvantage (even if it's illusory, and he's not personally acting badly), and distorts pricing signals. It's unfair not (or not primarily / directly) to customers, but to the rest of the legitimate players within an industry.

Yes, I know this isn't the first time this has happened, and that people likewise benefit from connections to governments led by other political parties. Those instances are also bad!

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

#454

Post by x3ro »

cvoss wrote: post #174
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.

Let's call it what it is, a massive wealth transfer from the general public to companies, and transitively (primarily) to the super-rich. Just because it's legal that they are robbing us blind does not make it right.

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

#455

Post by jacquesm »

krsw wrote: post #250
koolba wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it extortion? They could have gotten a different deal from anybody else or no deal at all. Nobody was twisting there arm or forcing them to deal with this one company to sell their tariff claims.

This is basically the government doing a protection racket. I swear, the amount of neoliberals in here lauding the move is a recession indicator. Did we all forget what corruption is?

Corruption is so endemic now that people stop seeing it. This was the same in the former USSR, when I was there I would be utterly amazed by the degree to which everybody had normalized corruption, it was not considered anything wrong or special at all, it was just the way business was done. You could effectively buy your way into or out of anything.

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

#456

Post by jacquesm »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #341
jacquesm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to present figures when you're arguing the hard-to-prove side of something not when it's plain obvious that business are not in a position to deal with such shocks in the market without having to reach for capital. This is not normal. Typical operating margins of business is anywhere from 5 to 20% with outliers in the digital domain but that's not the part that we are talking about here. Anyway, you want fig…

There’s a long way from businesses like predictable stable climates (and that ship has long sailed) and business won’t survive. There’s no reason to believe the latter is true.

At a guess you are not operating a business that adds value to real goods subject to overnight surprise tariffs then.

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

#457

Post by DangitBobby »

joshlemer wrote: post #248
kowalej wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, the companies used the tariff excuse to raise prices which will not come back down even if tariffs are fully off the table. Just like the price inflation during COVID.

Prices don’t monotonically go up forever, prices come down all the time Edit: Sorry autocorrect thought I said moronically,

Did you mean "moronically" or "monotonically"? I'd accept either, just wondering which one you meant.

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

#458

Post by epolanski »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #434
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…

Maybe I don't understand as I'm an outsider, but as per my recent comment on this topic [0], I fail to see the logic of how "other countries" pay the US when the tariffs are paid by the importer and not the other country which is exporting. I do acknowledge that import taxes can in theory help local industries, especially if the other countries are subsidizing exported goods. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Tariffs almost never make sense, unless it's an industry that's super important for your own survival.

Capitalism is about efficiency, and eventually there are going countries where producing certain items will always be more efficient. East asian countries have spent decades innovating and investing in their manufacturing capabilities.

Also, one thing that grinds my nerves are the narratives of trade balances that only focus on physical goods but conveniently ignore services.

US exports trillions in software, ai, music, videogames, financial services, cloud, and that's conveniently ignored.

Eventually tariffs come back biting those who issue them, because the moment your local industries don't need to compete anymore to survive, they have no incentives to innovate.

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

#459

Post by edaemon »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #434
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…

Maybe I don't understand as I'm an outsider, but as per my recent comment on this topic [0], I fail to see the logic of how "other countries" pay the US when the tariffs are paid by the importer and not the other country which is exporting. I do acknowledge that import taxes can in theory help local industries, especially if the other countries are subsidizing exported goods. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

It's nonsense, that's why it's hard to understand.

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

#460

Post by epolanski »

lokar wrote: post #389
lokar wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friends? America has no friends, only client states.

I'm serious. The Trump/MAGA view of foreign policy is that the US sits at the top, we owe friendship to no one. We engage with other nations transactionally, zero sum, with the US always getting more.

This isn't the Trump/MAGA foreign policy, american exceptionalism is a century old and only gotten stronger. If anything MAGA is the full blown expression of this phenomenon.

The difference was that in the past US understood that you "rule" better when you surround yourself with enemies.

Now the policy is to dictate conditions left and right.

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