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

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

#91

Post by magicalhippo »

coldpie wrote: post #63
sillysaurusx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s smart though. If you don’t want to lose your rights to tariff refunds, don’t sell them. Would the alternative be to forbid companies from selling those rights in this case? As for whether consumers should get anything, I’m sympathetic. It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? You’d have to quantify how much overhead they’ve paid in tariffs, and that seems like an IRS-scale j…

> It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? This was the point of the tariffs, wasn't it? The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible. Sure maybe half of it will go where it ought to as a fig leaf, but a very large chunk of that cash will be making its way to Trump's lo…

> The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible.

The government knows exactly who paid what in duties, otherwise they couldn't tell if you were trying to avoid duties.

So they know exactly who to pay back and how much.

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

#94

Post by estearum »

general_reveal wrote: post #43
estearum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...? No, this is the consequence of having an actual stupid person in the Oval Office and the majority party being half coerced and half committed in cultlike devotion to POTUS. Obviously the US has economic weapons. It's the largest economy in the world. If anything this signals that POTUS himself cannot wield those weapons though, and the American public, political, and business apparatuses have little appetite for…

[flagged]

Okay, I'll entertain it. How would you distinguish between the brilliant move of using illegal tariffs to disclose limited power and appetite for tariffs, versus someone displaying a 3rd grader level of economic understanding and saying "well of course we should charge people to sell stuff in 'my store' and I am now the manager of 'the store', so I get to set the rate"?

What specific pieces of evidence do you believe makes the former more likely than the latter?

+1 on nukes, though MAD has worked for decades so far. I agree people think this risk is far more remote than it actually is. Especially the risk of a catastrophic accident as nukes proliferate and forces get put on higher readiness.

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

#95

Post by gruez »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
sillysaurusx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s smart though. If you don’t want to lose your rights to tariff refunds, don’t sell them. Would the alternative be to forbid companies from selling those rights in this case? As for whether consumers should get anything, I’m sympathetic. It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? You’d have to quantify how much overhead they’ve paid in tariffs, and that seems like an IRS-scale j…

It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. If you think this is smart then you may as well go around clubbing old ladies over their heads, as long as you don't get caught it's like free money right? The alternative is not to forbid companies from selling those rights, the alternative is to undo this deal and pay the whole amount back to those that originally forked it over and…

>It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing.

Where's the extortion? The "it's a nice shop you got there..." racket only works if you can strongly influence whether the damages occur (ie. you tell your goons to attack the shop, or not). So far as I can tell however, that's not the case, because Trump wanted the tariffs to stay, and was sad that they got revoked. Going back to the mob analogy, it would be like if the mob boss asked for protection money, the goons didn't damage the shop, the mob boss was sad that the shop didn't get damaged, and then went to to find some other way to damage the shop (ie. section 122 tariffs).

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

#96

Post by duxup »

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….

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

#97

Post by coldpie »

andyfilms1 wrote: post #81
mothballed wrote: post #4

... refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs were passed to. Essentially turning it retroactively into a tax to private businesses. This is the worst case of all scenarios for the consumer.

I understand the frustration but I don't understand the logic. The businesses who paid the tariffs (who were literally sent an invoice that they paid) should be the ones refunded. How would the government even be able to determine if a business increased product prices due to tariffs vs other factors, or even if the business increased prices at all? What if the product is a loss leader and the company was fine just e…

Yes, you're almost there, just go one step further. Now you've got a big pile of money and no clear rules on where it should go. Who gets to decide where it will go? Given how this administration operates, where do you think it will go?

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

#98

Post by pwg »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #83
mhb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost, it seems pretty impractical to determine who is due a refund - end users or businesses. Or the logistics of refunds to customers. One possibility would be for businesses to return the fraction of the tariff paid by customers to future customers by offering the items affected with a negative tax until the refund is used up.

"Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost…" Ha ha, that's a good one. I have yet to hear about reduced profits anywhere. Instead, as I said in another comment, I have actual physical receipts with the additional tariff cost (itemized!) in a pile on my workshop (which I'll never see refunded).

If the amounts are under the limit you might sue the company who cut those invoices in small claims court for the amounts of the tariff line items on the invoices.

The invoices give you slam dunk evidence that you paid that amount in tariffs, and the supreme court decision says the payment was illegally collected, so seems like an easy win for you.

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

#99

Post by quickthrowman »

mhb wrote: post #28
mothballed wrote: post #4

... refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs were passed to. Essentially turning it retroactively into a tax to private businesses. This is the worst case of all scenarios for the consumer.

Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost, it seems pretty impractical to determine who is due a refund - end users or businesses. Or the logistics of refunds to customers. One possibility would be for businesses to return the fraction of the tariff paid by customers to future customers by offering the items affected with a negative tax until the refund is used up.

> Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer

As someone who prices and sells labor and material for a living, nobody ate increased tariffs. They were passed along to the ultimate consumer of the tariffed product. Everyone was facing the same tariffs so they’re all incentivized to pass the cost along, line iteming the tariffs on the invoice would make it abundantly clear. I passed along all increased costs with a note on my proposal that said “Any and all additional tariffs will be paid for by the customer.”

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

#100

Post by rootusrootus »

rbanffy wrote: post #38
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…

I believe, with huge disappointment, that this level of corruption has been normalised in this administration and that nothing will come out of this.

Look how many comments in this discussion are scrambling to support the corruption. It’s very normalized, to the point where we don’t call it corruption any more, we call it good business.
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