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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

#821

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

apexalpha wrote: post #136

It's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.

It’s one of the few things in the U.S. constitution that is not ill defined. Tariffs are very explicitly the prerogative of Congress.

The fact that the administration of tariffs is so much better defined than really anything else shouldn’t be surprising because tariffs is the proximate cause of the Revolutionary war.

It’s embarrassing that the 3 justices put their partisanship ahead of the clear language of the constitution and explicitly stated intentions of the founders.

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

#822

Post by carefree-bob »

rsynnott wrote: post #778
carefree-bob wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe that the incidence of taxation falls 100% on the buyer and never the seller? And you think those who have a more accurate view are "lying"? Please learn a bit about the incidence of taxation: https://stantcheva.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum... The main models supporting your view is where consumer income is exogenous and all firm profits are redistributed to the representative consumer…

Indeed; it's not 100%. It's actually 96%: https://www.kielinstitut.de/publications/news/americas-own-g...

LOL. Have you read that paper? And do you believe the BLS is lying about inflation data?

Let's take a look at the latest EU-consensus reinforcing pamphlet pushed out by Kiehl, because when Mahlkow wrote about tarrifs in 2022, he was all for them. At that time the EU was debating imposing tariffs on Russia, and here Mahlkov insisted that there would be massive economic long term contraction for Russia - which did not happen -- yet simultaneously, Mahlkow predict no meaningful effect of the EU's tariffs on the EU itself. You see, at that time, Mahlkov insisted that because the EU GDP was larger, there would be no impact on the EU itself as a result of tariffs.

https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Pu...

Now let's dig into the crazy assumptions of Mahlkow's model. Does he use sophisticated econometric analysis? No, what he does is look at shipping containers and published tariff rates. What he assumes is that if, before the tariffs, there were 100 units shipped, but after the tariffs, there were also 100 units shipped, then it must be that 100% of the cost was passed onto the consumer.

You see, some tariffs (which the EU bureaucracy and it's various patronage organizations like Kiehl) support don't cause any harm to the nation levying the tariff, but other tariffs are deadly, and fortunately Mahlkov will pick the right model to reach the right conclusion. No looking at pallet data in 2022!

Now what is wrong with looking at pallet data for a brief period of time. It never occurs to Mahlkov that the corporations importing the goods have to absorb some of the cost. Mahlkov just assumes 100% is passed through to consumers and the importers pay nothing.

This must mean the BLS is committing some kind of fraud as this has not been showing up in CPI data.

I'll leave you to decide whether this is warranted or not, but let's just say there is a reason this remains a "brief" available to download and is not a published paper.

Meanwhile, real economists, even though the profession is politicized, nevertheless understand that they missed the boat on estimating tariff effects, and that the models need updating. To a real researcher, it's actually a great opportunity. But to someone like Mahlkov, who is trotted out whenever there needs to be economic support for or against the same policy, he will gladly write a paper. And then others will cite it.

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

#824

Post by Andrex »

mastax wrote: post #229
apexalpha wrote: post #136

It's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.

It seems likely to me the ruling took this long because John Roberts wanted to get a more unanimous ruling. Additionally, the law in this case isn’t ill defined whatsoever. Alito, Thomas, and to a lesser extent Kavanaugh are just partisan hacks. For many years I wanted to believe they had a consistent and defensible legal viewpoint, even if I thought it was misguided. However the past six years have destroyed that no…

The dissent seems to be "Ignoring whether or not the President acted lawfully, it would sure create an awful big mess if we undid it. And he's gonna try again anyways, and maybe even succeed in that future attempt, creating an even bigger mess. So for these reasons, it shouldn't be undone."

Curious if others have different readings.

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

#825

Post by _DeadFred_ »

coldpie wrote: post #66
techdmn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this suggests that the problem is not cost, but lack of competition, either in production or in pricing. My understanding is that there are sufficient laws to ensure competition, but they are not widely enforced.

> My understanding is that there are sufficient laws to ensure competition, but they are not widely enforced. That's correct, the laws exist but it's up to the executive to enforce them. The US has not meaningfully enforced any anti-trust laws since the Microsoft web browser bundling case in the 90s. There was a brief glimmer of anti-trust being resuscitated by FTC during the Biden admin, but the tech company monopol…

Crazy how anti-capitalist the US has become. The deep capitalist thinkers believed capitalism needs government oversight to keep markets healthy, but for some reason we stopped following that belief.

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

#826

Post by luxuryballs »

Rapzid wrote: post #716
apawloski wrote: post #83

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..

To that point it was always relative to the advantage it gained overall when used as leverage for negotiations, now the issue is what other forms of leverage remain? Whether the outcomes of the agreements are good or not is one thing but there’s room for the argument that perhaps tariffs are a better form of leverage when compared with other available options.

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

#827

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

originalvichy wrote: post #755
cmurf wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense this is the correct level of punishment for all. The courts are slow and deliberative. The Congress could solve this in a week. Impeachment and removal from office.

You are correct. My country does not have the similar separation of powers the US has. I do not understand why Americans have a hard time realizing this: the President and other elected officials work for YOU. They literally run for office to get the position, and they get voted in. Why would someone let an elected official enrich themselves and their friends with your money? Why would the legislative branch allow th…

>”Why would someone let an elected official enrich themselves and their friends with your money? Why would the legislative branch allow that?”

Let is a heavily loaded term here. The most an individual can reasonably do is cast their single vote in an election year. I could attempt to bring a lawsuit against a politician, but it would almost certainly be thrown out due to a lack of standing. Activism is certainly an option, but that is really just an effort to convince others to cast their single vote differently. Outside of those options, one would have to break some laws.

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

#828

Post by kopirgan »

xnx wrote: 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)

Refunds are very complicated. How does the co even know who bought? As it goes thru several layers of distribution chain. Assuming they want to refund of course. I suppose they will claim they reduced prices (or more likely deferred price increases, how nice!)

And then not all tariff was absorbed by importer - some suppliers would have cut prices to compensate wholly or partly. We would never know as it is likely buried in various other discounts and contract terms not a line item that says "for tariff". Down the chain, others with margins could have done the same. That's probably why the inflation impact was less than scary scenarios painted by some economists.

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

#829

Post by abakker »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #804
beloch wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be so in some cases, but there are extra steps in others. e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge. 3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to re…

Some additional context to your note: Howard Lutnick is Trump's Secretary of the Treasury. And also was Epstein's literal next-door neighbor.

And bought a house from Epstein for $10

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

#830

Post by staticautomatic »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #679
teeray wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone sued them in small claims over it, there probably would be a whole lot of default judgments.

Then you’re on your own to collect.

You’re always on your own to collect.
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