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Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

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Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#711
post #118
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund. The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.

To the CPAs among us: will the refunded import taxes be treated as extra profit for all the importers who paid them? I could see an argument that they don't have a legal obligation to pass the refunds on to their customers, any more than my local grocery store owes me 5 cents for the gallon of milk I bought last year if the store discovers that their wholesaler had been mistakenly overcharging them.

Related question, unanswerable except maybe as a rough estimate: how much will it cost, in accountant/bookkeeper time, to do all the administrivia required to process all these refunds?

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#713
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that isn’t relevant at all. This Supreme Court is completely cooked. If the case was “can Trump dissolve New York as a state” you would still have 3 justices siding in his favor with some dog shit reasoning.

Read the opinions. Both are pretty reasonable. I think the dissent has a good point that a plain language interpretation of the term "regulate imports" would seem to include tariffs. The bigger issue I think is that that statute exists in the first place. "Emergency powers" that a president can grant himself just by "declaring an emergency" on any pretense with no checks or balances is a stupid idea.

Well, not really because that part doesn't grant the US President arbitrary powers to perform any action that would result in regulation (for example, he is not given the power to go around killing random people even if doing so would effectively regulate international trade; he can't declare war on another country even if doing so would be the best way to effectuate regulation of trade with another country) it gives him the OBLIGATION to perform regulation, using the powers delegated to him.

If giving the US President unlimited and arbitrary authority as long as they can claim it was useful for meeting a legal obligation created by Congress were the correct interpretation then we need look no further than the "Take Care" clause of the US Constitution, where the US President is given the obligation to take care that all laws are faithfully executed -- which, with this interpretation, would mean that any action would be under the purview of the US President as long as they could claim at doing that action resulted in the laws being faithfully executed.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#714

Useful site for daily tariff updates: Trade Compliance Resource Hub.[1] They've marked which tariffs are now invalid and which are still valid. [1] https://www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com/2026/02/20/trump-...

Damn, that’s pretty much all of them

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#715
post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many are beyond furious

Many voted for this

These people are not necessary against tariff, they are against paying more for their stuff and having it benefit some middleman because the current government messed up badly.

I can otherwise understand how people would agree on paying more for their stuff if it allows their fellow citizens to have a job.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#716

Great news for people who had to bend over backwards pretending this disruptive, nakedly corrupt behavior was "good, actually." But unfortunately, there are other channels for them to effectively do the same thing, as discussed in oral arguments. So still not a major win for American manufacturers or consumers, I fear.

The damage goes far beyond the wallets of business and consumers. The unilateral, arbitrary tariff setting has little do with money and everything to do with the power it gave Trump. And was one of the primary instruments used to destroy relationships with our foreign allies including our closes neighbor..

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#717
post #57

Am I understanding this right? 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. 2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US government 3) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to the seller after this ruling 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

Or the government will not refund, and add more illegal tariffs. That wouldn’t be surprising, unfortunately

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#718

Finally some sanity. The administration has use laws about "national security" and other so call "emergencies" to impose tariffs. If everything is an emergency then nothing is, and that was clearly not congress' intention with those laws. The power to impose tariffs rests with the legislator, not the executive. Of course our congress is effectively useless - we can thank decades of Mitch McConnell's (and others) "not…

We're currently in the midst of 51 ongoing "national emergencies" [1], dating back to at least Carter. I think something that the next great empire will learn from is to limit emergency powers as well as the ability to create emergency powers, because in spite of their name they inevitably end up becoming normalized and just used as regular powers. The description of some of those emergencies is comedic: "Declared a…

Most of these seem at least plausible to me given they almost all have to do with foreign conflicts, and given that they have to be renewed every year, they can't be too excessive since Trump has kept in place 8/9 of Biden's emergency declarations? and your description of the most comedic one was actually maybe the most important one?

It was to stave off a bank run at the beginning of the great depression, and it was only done as a temporary measure so that Congress had time to write the long term legislation which they did 4 days later on March 9th.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah,yes, british constitutional law. In a country where no parliaments can bind its successors it means there is no constitution and the constitutional law is a polite fiction poorly held together with tradition and precedent.

it's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than the US system

The difference is that the US system is given by God, as commonly said by many Americans over the decades. And what power is greater than God?

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#720
post #57

Am I understanding this right? 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. 2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US government 3) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to the seller after this ruling 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

Elections have consequences.

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