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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

#571

Post by empath75 »

phil21 wrote: post #547
empath75 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just love this idea that corporations just discovered greed during the pandemic and before that had been selflessly dedicated to selling goods for the benefit of mankind at the lowest price they possibly could. Companies always try to maximize prices, and they do that by trying to optimize the price they sell things at to sell as much as they possibly can at the highest price they can get away with. Sometimes you c…

I think there actually was a lot of surprise from executives coming out of COVID that they could raise prices so high without it impacting consumer demand in the ways they had previously predicted. The Chipotle earnings calls were pretty much the prime example of this. CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing, and that due to the increases not impacting sales volume they planned…

> CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing

That is because the extra money in the economy also inflated salaries. Inflation is annoying but it basically has no impact on affordability over the long run. Everyone just assumed that their increases in salary were a well earned recognition of their contributions, but the increases in prices was pure corporate greed and corruption. They were both the same thing. People got more money and prices went up.

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

#572

Post by platevoltage »

scoofy wrote: post #478
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.

Any sensible administration implementing such an obviously suspect tariff regime could have easily put the tariffs in a kind of escrow instead of just pretending it's novel policy was trivially constitutional. Blaming SCOTUS here is not out of the question, but they should not be "entirely" to blame, unless you think it's totally fine to run the Executive branch like you're trying to get away with something. It's not…

Right. I’m okay with blaming both.

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

#575

Post by solid_fuel »

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?

Unfortunately, this is what republicans voted for, as approved by their congressional representatives who declined to assert congressional power over taxation. Sadly, we all have to live with it until they wise up or quit voting.

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

#576

Post by danielmarkbruce »

hvb2 wrote: post #554
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cantor Fitzgerald is an investment bank. Rather than claim a straw man, think about what they do and how it interacts with the administration. Everything they do is heavily regulated. If they couldn't do anything that gave an appearance of a conflict, they literally couldn't do a single thing that makes up their business and would be hobbled.

> Rather than claim a straw man, think about what they do and how it interacts with the administration. Uh, essentially betting against a policy your former head put in place isn't a typical thing? You would absolutely steer clear of this. There's plenty of other things they could be doing, no? Just to make the point. This is such a typical thing investment banks do, that (especially) they are the ones doing it and n…

It's an investment bank. They have a million things going on, sometimes counter to each other.

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

#577

Post by solid_fuel »

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.

There are three co-equal branches of government. SCOTUS is to blame for the chaos, but so is Congress. The Republican members of Congress could have joined the Democrats at any point to reassert Congressional power over tariffs and taxation. They chose not to.

They also chose to appoint the conservative majority on the Supreme Court which made these choices.

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

#578

Post by Detrytus »

Maxatar wrote: post #412
burkaman wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your position but I disagree. If I were trying to predict whether the government is going to win in court, I think reading what the government's own lawyers think about the case would be valuable. If it were possible to pay for this I think people would, that's why I think it is material. Some random person's opinion is not relevant information, but the opinion of people directly involved in a case is.

Yes it absolutely is valuable to have access to expert opinions and people do pay money to acquire opinions from experts. But expert advice, even if material, is not the same as insider information.

Well, I think context matters here a lot:

If you go to a random lawyer in Wyoming and ask them to write "expert opinion" then what you'll get would probably be something standard, written by a junior associate, or maybe even produced by ChatGPT.

If the White House orders "expert opinion" on potential Supreme Court ruling then the chances are that the expert asked to prepare it is someone who plays golf with some of the SCOTUS judges.

So those two "expert opinions" might not bear the same weight.

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

#579

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

teolandon wrote: post #380
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the tax rate if you bought things made in the US with US materials?

Please direct me to the nearest grocery store that sells US bananas made with US materials

How many bananas have you been eating since tariffs were put in place?

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

#580

Post by mrguyorama »

syllogism wrote: post #374
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.

Who cares who came up with the illegal tariff implementation, the point is that a member of the government profited off of their own administration's incompetence.

It's obscene. I don't care whether a law was broken or not.

You want to profit from government incompetence? Stop being part of the government then.

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