[HN Gopher] Judge orders government to begin refunding more than...
___________________________________________________________________
Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in
tariffs
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 736 points
Date : 2026-03-05 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| pwg wrote:
| Paywalled.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Probably unintended but this is a great pun.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Humorously, this fits the topic quite well
| mothballed wrote:
| ... 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.
| bdangubic wrote:
| that was the plan all along
| davidw wrote:
| These people are evil, but also bumbling idiots, so sometimes
| there is no evil plan, just incompetence.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| There are direct ties from the administration to companies
| offering hedges against tariffs. There was absolutely an
| evil plan, IMO.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree. But a few sure scrambled when they read the tea
| leaves and saw a chance to profit by it.
| bdangubic wrote:
| they are everything except incompetent when it comes to
| massively looting us and profiting.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| It's COVID PPP all over again... Expect more asset inflation.
| NuclearPM wrote:
| Tax to businesses? You think the costs were only passed down
| once? Really?
| coldpie wrote:
| Yet another successful Republican transfer of wealth from the
| people who do the work (employees) to the people who don't
| (owners).
| mhb wrote:
| 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.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Making people spend more money to "save" money is just a sale
| to increase profits even more.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "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).
| pwg wrote:
| 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.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > 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).
|
| You could ask for a tariff refund from those suppliers.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > 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."
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Maybe this will finally be the impetus for the US to go for a
| VAT? Hell if we get a carbon based border adjustment tax out
| of this like people were talking about in Trump's first term
| this might be a case of broken clocks.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| That's not how capitalism works. Consumers ate the cost. Have
| you not bought anything in the last year?
| mhb wrote:
| Yeah. You're confusing capitalism and how businesses
| generally work with this particular tariff. Which, based on
| these comments, was often/always just passed through to
| customers.
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| You're thinking way too much like a programmer
|
| It doesn't need to be a perfect solution, you could just give
| everyone a flat refund similar to class action payouts.
| mhb wrote:
| Well that would seem like a potentially huge mess depending
| on the size of the purchases. Not to mention that the
| purchasers are not all easily tracked down. I wasn't
| suggesting it because it was perfect; I was suggesting it
| because it might be viable.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs
| were passed to
|
| I mean the importers were the ones who paid the duties. It's
| not a given they passed it on, and if it was then in many cases
| it was spread out. That is importer paid for one container of
| items, which in turn got sold to individuals which the
| government has no record of.
|
| If you ordered delivery by say FedEx and they paid the duty and
| passed it on to you, you should have a reasonable case to get
| it refunded from FedEx when they get the money back. Ideally
| they handle it automatically since they have all the necessary
| details.
|
| For manufacturing companies it's less clear, as some might have
| swallowed all or some of the duties, and multiple components
| might have been affected by different rates etc.
|
| Will be interesting to see how companies who passed it on will
| handle this, given it's a massive PITA to do anything but screw
| over their customers.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > It's not a given they passed it on,
|
| Actually, it is. _Nobody_ ate tariffs, everyone passed them
| on.
|
| That's how capitalism works, you sum up the costs of
| production and add margin, unless you're a BC backed company
| trying to take over a market by selling dollars for a
| quarter.
|
| Nobody was trying to corner a market by eating tariffs and
| blowing their margins away, _everyone_ passed them down to
| the ultimate consumer of the tariffed product. Take a look at
| the record profits that publicly traded companies are putting
| up, they're the only ones that could potentially eat the
| tariffs and they obviously did not do so, which means smaller
| businesses definitely didn't eat the tariffs either.
| andyfilms1 wrote:
| 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
| eating the expense? Or what about a nefarious company who
| manufacturers their stuff in Canada but used "tariffs" as an
| excuse to increase prices? What would they be refunded from?
| coldpie wrote:
| 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?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > 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.
|
| So if I'm the owner of Uncle Billy Bobs Autoparts and I ship
| from Madeupcountry. I billed you $500 extra for some new car
| part. The US government refunds me on the tariffs they
| charged me to import my product to you, and now your taxes is
| going into my refund. Who wins in this scenario? They're
| effectively giving every country a free bonus. I wouldn't be
| surprised if some people got scammed by the tariffs by being
| overcharged.
|
| There's no serious paper trail to any of this to meaningfully
| return lost revenue to the American consumer, I would rather
| not waste tax dollars on refunds.
|
| I guess the only "winners" are maybe businesses that didn't
| pass on the revenue loss on to the consumer? But how do you
| even correctly refund those businesses?
| philipallstar wrote:
| You just refund the people who pay the tariffs. You can't
| do any more than that.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I'm okay with that, though I don't think most of my
| receipts highlight how much went into a tariff. Maybe for
| very specific purchases it did, but for most things I've
| bought over the past year there's no real way to gauge
| this.
| philipallstar wrote:
| Agreed; only the edge importer can be refunded by the
| government. Hopefully those businesses pass on the
| refund, but that's up to them.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| > 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 eating the expense? Or what about a nefarious company
| who manufacturers their stuff in Canada but used "tariffs" as
| an excuse to increase prices? What would they be refunded
| from?
|
| Gee, I don't know, receipts ?
|
| Also simply revenue on the business end
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| One thing that should happen moving forward, whether we keep
| tariffs in one way or the other, we need consumer protection
| laws. I assume companies abused the "oh yeah you owe us for the
| tariffs" as a way to overcharge consumers. I think additional
| costs driven by tariffs should be 100% spelled out to the
| consumer next to where you're shown the tax amount. This should
| allow for auditing later if companies overcharge. It also would
| make "refunding" more reasonable, since you could show a
| receipt if technically you paid for a tariff, otherwise, if the
| company swallows it, they would show the amount but 'discount'
| or 'omit' it as something they are choosing to pay for. Without
| a paper trail I don't see how refunding any of this is
| feasible.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Here's a gift link to access it if you don't have a subscription:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-...
| jokoon wrote:
| What if this was the plan, so those importers can make money?
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| in other news:
|
| https://newrepublic.com/post/206882/trump-commerce-secretary...
| happyopossum wrote:
| Also in other news:
|
| "Amid online claims Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons,
| Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, senior executives at Cantor
| Fitzgerald, could benefit from the Supreme Court's tariff
| ruling, a firm spokesperson told Newsweek it has "never
| executed any transactions or taken risk on the legality of
| tariffs.""
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-
| money-...
| WarmWash wrote:
| I have a few thousand dollars that I paid to a Chinese
| manufacturer who then used that money to pay an importer so that
| I could get my materials hassle free.
|
| Looks like the hassle will now be on the backend...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I got the receipts even--with tariffs itemized.
|
| _I 'll_ never see that money.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| One of our vendors started charging a 10% tariff fee for
| parts ordered from Switzerland... we passed that fee directly
| on to our customers as a line item. I can't imagine the
| headache when (not if) they come to us expecting a refund for
| that.
| dtech wrote:
| I work in the customs industry. What you are describing was a
| common scheme (DDP Incoterms) to evade the tariffs (partially),
| and there is a carve out of the refunds that explicitly says
| DDP will not be refunded. So there's s chance you get nothing
| back.
|
| Also contractually you didn't pay the duties so you wouldn't
| get refunds.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| 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
| isn't insider trading (by the literal Commerce Secretary), I
| don't know what is.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I believe, with huge disappointment, that this level of
| corruption has been normalised in this administration and that
| nothing will come out of this.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Yea, I'm done hearing "the wheels of justice turn slowly..."
| bullshit. People have had their lives ruined, far quicker,
| for far less.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The wheels of justice don't turn at all once you reach $1B
| or so. Their speed is essentially inversely proportional to
| the net worth of the individual under scrutiny. And if
| you're _really_ rich you get to buy your own laws through a
| thing called lobbying. So you will get even more rich.
| coldpie wrote:
| Life in prison for every single person working under this
| administration is the moderate position.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| After this is all over, we probably need to do something
| about presidential pardon power. Getting a constitutional
| amendment through is hard, but I don't see another
| option.
| rbanffy wrote:
| A different understanding of the extension of the
| presidential pardon when it creates a conflict of
| interest from the SCOTUS would be one possible path.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| I'm sure plenty of wrathful extremists thought they held
| a moderate position too.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But they are sticking it to the libs, so it's all worth it?
| barelysapient wrote:
| This assumes companies would have refunded consumers.
|
| Obviously if a company did this, refunding consumers was the
| last thing on their mind.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Best case consumers may be refunded for tariffs directly
| charged to them by shipping companies like FedEx and DHL
| (USPS too, but can you really see them having the competence
| to do this?!).
|
| What consumers will presumably never be refunded for are the
| increased prices they've been paying for imports of any kind
| (from Walmart, Amazon, grocery store) where someone else was
| the importer.
| 6510 wrote:
| It will trickle down!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| 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 job. Dealing
| with it at the scale of individual companies is at least
| tractable.
| bhouston wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Definitely smart, but also sure looks like an insider play /
| corruption / self-dealing.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The commerce secretary has no control over what the Supreme
| Court does. Anyone could have read the law and decided
| whether they thought the tariffs were legal or not.
| simmerup wrote:
| But he does know that Trump had no plan to contest the
| supreme court or make new laws
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Trump doesn't have those powers.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| The commerce secretary has in this case a huge conflict
| of interest in pushing for these illegal policies in the
| first place
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The commerce secretary wasn't the one pushing for them in
| the first place. The president was.
|
| I mean, look, there's plenty of conflicts of interest,
| and stuff that sure looks like graft, and claims of
| people making insane amounts of money off of stuff. But
| in this case, the commerce secretary's options were 1) do
| the tariffs or 2) get fired. Minion? Sure. Minion without
| the self-respect or ethics to quit when they were being
| told to do unconstitutional stuff? Also sure. Pushing
| these policies, as though they had agency in the matter?
| No.
| podgietaru wrote:
| Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds that
| the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that they
| needed a cash injection to stay afloat.
|
| Don't sell your right to your tariff refund is one of those
| things that sounds good in principle, but falls apart when
| you apply some sense to it.
| gruez wrote:
| >Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds
| that the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that
| they needed a cash injection to stay afloat.
|
| No? You also do it for certainly. "One bird in hand beats
| two in the bush" and all that. You see this occurring
| outside of tariff refunds, with businesses selling debts to
| debt collectors for pennies on the dollar, or bond holders
| selling high risk bonds (eg. Argentina) for steep
| discounts.
| phil21 wrote:
| Is a 20 cent on the dollar or so payment for the new tariff
| expense really going to save a company that much on the
| bubble?
|
| I'm sure there are a few exceptional cases, but that
| doesn't seem to me like it would be the typical cases. A
| company needing to pay $100 in tariffs but then the $20 of
| cash infusion being the thing that saves the day seems
| rather unlikely.
|
| I'd say it's more likely this was a profit center to more
| companies than it was a life line. As in they passed the
| tariff down to their consumers, and also collected the 20%
| as a cash payment to juice the bottom line.
|
| More common though would be simply a way to help defray
| some costs and provide certainty.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| I really hope those companies that passed the tariff to
| consumers are required to refund the increase to those
| same consumers, regardless of whether they sold their
| refund or not.
| vincnetas wrote:
| i guess there would be much more initiative for Lutnik not to
| refund (ignore courts order, or drag them out like in other
| cases) if no one would have sold their rights to refund.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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
| who needed to sell these 'rights' in order to keep their
| companies alive.
| gruez wrote:
| >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).
| jacquesm wrote:
| You think businesses as a rule can all survive a 15 to
| 100% surcharge on their products without running into
| liquidity issues?
| bluGill wrote:
| Those are a sunk cost at this point though. The business
| likely is better off having sold and got the money now -
| vs risking they will never get a refund.
| gruez wrote:
| The stocks of major retailers haven't cratered, so maybe?
| You're going to have to present some figures rather than
| just asking rhetorical questions.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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 figures, well, here are some figures:
|
| https://marketrealist.com/why-did-700-bu/
|
| I'm sure there are other sources, better ones, worse ones
| but they all tell roughly the same story: willy nilly
| tarrifs have a negative effect on one's ability to
| operate a business. Businesses like predictable, stable
| climates to operate in.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| At a guess you are not operating a business that adds
| value to real goods subject to overnight surprise tariffs
| then.
| hedora wrote:
| Extortion rackets come in many forms.
|
| For example, NCR (National Cash Register) used to have
| their sales people "accidentally" break competitive
| machines (dropping them on the floor was common -- these
| were old precision mechanical adders), then offer an NCR
| machine as a "free" replacement.
|
| You could argue this wasn't extortion. What are the
| damages? The replacement machine was higher value, so the
| shop was "made whole", and was only temporarily without a
| cash register. Of course, the competitor got screwed out
| of support contracts + renewal, and it was made very
| clear to the stores they had to play ball. (Unless they
| wanted to buy a replacement, and watch it also get
| smashed.)
|
| It's the same with the tariffs:
|
| Adopt a bunch of Trump dictated policies, or they steal
| your money (the mechanism is not providing exemptions).
| Later, they "refund" the payments (so, no further court
| action), but somehow the money does not go back to the
| people that it came from.
|
| Ignoring the businesses that sold their rights to
| collect, all sorts of prices have skyrocketed in the last
| year. The consumers that are paying the increased amounts
| at retail are not going to see a cent of this settlement.
| Where is _my_ check?
|
| Also, it's unclear how many Supreme Court justices
| changed their votes _because of_ the sold rights to
| collect refunds. The company involved gave a lot of money
| to Trump and conservative campaigns, and many of the
| justices are in his pocket. It 's also unclear if they
| bribed the justices directly, since that's not public
| data.
|
| On top of that, when these "securities" were sold, it
| could have been made clear that they would come with
| favoritism in the future. Did businesses that paid up get
| special exemptions? Were they threatened with
| intimidation that then didn't happen because they sold
| the rights?
|
| All of the above is standard practice with this
| administration. They had the benefit of the doubt, but
| burned through it years ago.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Self-dealing by someone connected to the state, yes.
| Extortion, no.
|
| It takes a fair amount of money to take a court case to the
| Supreme Court. You can pay it all (and still maybe lose),
| or you can let the law firm have part of what you win. This
| happens _all the time_ in the US legal system. It 's not
| extortion; it's essentially venture funding by the law
| firm. (Yes, I'm aware of the pattern in the previous
| sentence, but I'm in fact a human, and not even LLM-
| assisted.) If the company doesn't want to play that way,
| they don't have to. They can pay the full cost of the
| lawsuit themselves.
| arethuza wrote:
| Litigation funding is essentially just another asset
| class for investors:
|
| https://thehedgefundjournal.com/the-emerging-market-for-
| liti...
| koolba wrote:
| 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.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| 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 even be certain
| either way?) This kind of conflict (even the appearance
| of this kind of conflict) is why we generally don't want
| government officials _or their families_ to be profiting
| directly off the policies they oversee. It is at best
| unseemly, and that's being kind.
| koolba wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Yes, because tariffs, like all taxes in the USA, are not
| imposed on individual people or entities. They're on
| industries and specific materials.
|
| If a company truly thought the chance of winning was low
| and needed the money now, they would pick the best offer.
| Regardless of who is making it.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This is naive. For larger firms, targeted product and
| industry-specific tariffs can be a game-changer. For
| example, Trump created a set of exemptions related to
| smartphones built in China that weren't officially aimed
| at Apple, but since Apple sells approximately 50% of US
| smartphones (for a much larger slice of profit) and 80%
| are made in China, this disproportionately affected a
| single company. But there are other areas where the
| administration can also use Federal power: see, for
| example, Trump's use of Federal approval to block the
| Netflix/WB merger as one example.
| eszed wrote:
| 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!
| krsw wrote:
| 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?
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| coldpie wrote:
| > 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 loyalty crew.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > 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.
| coldpie wrote:
| > The government knows exactly who paid what in duties
|
| No, they have a record of who handed the money over to
| the government. This does _not_ tell you who paid the
| duties. There 's going to be a whole lot of Trump toadies
| & business owners in the chain, siphoning cash from
| refunds before they work their way back to the people who
| actually paid them. And that's not even getting into the
| open corruption & fraud that will be happening as part of
| this as well.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > No, they have a record of who handed the money over to
| the government. This does not tell you who paid the
| duties.
|
| The entity that handed over the money to the government
| is the entity that paid the duties, and is the one the
| government must refund.
|
| If an entity has passed those costs on does not change
| that, and does not turn the 130B into a slush fund.
|
| However I agree that consumers will be likely be royally
| screwed by this debacle, that much was obvious from the
| start.
| coldpie wrote:
| If the government charges the importer $20 and the
| importer charges me $20, then I am in effect the one who
| paid the duty. If the refund goes to the importer, and it
| does not come back to me, then the government and the
| importer have colluded to rob me of $20. This isn't an
| accident, the owners of the import companies who will
| benefit from this theft were almost certainly all Trump
| supporters.
|
| In reality, half of the funds will go to that. Maybe even
| some tiny portion of it will genuinely make its way back
| to the people who actually paid the duties. This is the
| fig leaf to which I referred. The other half will go to
| Trump toadies in the form of "mistakes," fraud,
| corruption, skimming, unclaimed funds, etc. This is the
| slush fund to which I referred.
|
| In the end, all of it is going to Trump toadies. It's a
| $130B transfer of wealth to Trump's financial backers.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Maybe I'm naive, but if court orders tariff refunds
| cannot it also order that the importer must return it to
| individual buyers? That's only fair, right? Companies
| don't get to keep the money. If they want to sue
| government for some extra compensation for their trouble
| they can do that separately.
| phil21 wrote:
| That's not how commerce works.
|
| You agreed with your supplier on a price. You paid it.
|
| Doesn't matter that part of the price was tariffs or
| component costs or labor. Doesn't matter if your supplier
| gets a tax rebate or a kickback from an upstream supplier
| after the fact. These things are entirely immaterial to
| the meeting of the minds when you execute the contract
| for sale.
|
| The only moderately fuzzy case is going to be if there is
| an outright line item for "tariff charge" - I always
| thought companies were being a bit reckless explicitly
| adding these as line items due to this exact uncertainty.
| Very few companies are going to have a perfect 1:1 ratio
| here so there is some definite business risk in doing so.
|
| And no, not even close to all companies that were charged
| tariffs are "trump toadies" - that's an absurd claim on
| its face. The ones I know hurt the most and nearly put
| out of business due to needing to raise prices certainly
| were not. And there is zero way they could afford
| refunding at a 1:1 ratio now.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Doesn't matter if your supplier gets a tax rebate or a
| kickback from an upstream supplier after the fact.
|
| It does matter if the tax that was gathered was illegal,
| as it is here. The illegally gathered funds should go
| back to the entity that paid the tax, not the middleman
| who ferried it from here to there. The unclear method for
| how to accomplish this is where the grift will be coming
| in.
|
| > not even close to all companies that were charged
| tariffs are "trump toadies"
|
| I did not claim this. I claimed most of the money that
| will be refunded will go to Trump toadies.
| phil21 wrote:
| > I did not claim this. I claimed most of the money that
| will be refunded will go to Trump toadies.
|
| That would require most of the money collected being from
| trump toadies to begin with. Anyone that regularly
| imports goods as a matter of business will also be
| requesting their refunds. Only a tiny fraction sold their
| rights.
|
| > It does matter if the tax that was gathered was
| illegal, as it is here. The illegally gathered funds
| should go back to the entity that paid the tax.
|
| The entity that paid the tax was the one that wrote the
| check to the federal government. They chose to (or not)
| pass all or a portion of those costs down to their
| customer. The customer in the end chose to purchase the
| goods or not.
|
| If your landlord charges you $100/mo more in rent due to
| a property tax that was later reassessed due to a
| mistake, they are under no legal obligation to refund you
| that money. You chose to rent at the higher price.
|
| Simply put: Your recourse was at the time of transaction.
| After that it's no longer your money. Plenty of companies
| get refunded errant taxes paid years later due to law
| being misapplied or even found outright illegal. This is
| no different.
|
| The only marginally interesting legal question here is
| going to be the companies that separated it out as a line
| item. I imagine this will be roughly as enforceable as
| "fuel surcharges" are on airline tickets - where the
| surcharge has nothing to do with the actual real time
| cost of Jet fuel. It will likely devolve all the way down
| to specific clauses in contracts, most of which will not
| cover this to start with. So it may as well be a "I'm
| wearing black socks today" tax as a line item would be my
| guess. Very interested in the first few test cases
| though!
| coldpie wrote:
| > Your recourse was at the time of transaction
|
| These illegal taxes weren't only on optional goods. I
| couldn't opt out of buying everything for a full year. I
| disagree that it's OK for the government to force
| everyone in the country to give a $130B gift to business
| owners via an illegal action, the vast majority of which
| will be going straight to the wealthiest companies &
| people, and/or Trump's personal supporters. It's just
| straight-up theft.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| It's enriching himself on the taxpayers expense.
|
| Or would you trust someone on advising you, that has a pretty
| huge financial interest in proposing you policies that will
| fail because they are illegal?
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| What evidence do you have that those tariffs were proposed
| by him?
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| He bragged about it, and certainly didn't spoke out
| against them
|
| _So I pitch these ideas, and he says, 'Let's do it.' "
| Why not replace the I.R.S. with an External Revenue
| Service, which will collect tariffs and other levies from
| foreign sources instead of taxing citizens?_
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/donald-
| trumps-...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Imagine instead if the government didn't do the illegal thing
| in the first place. Or if the supreme court had not
| intervened on the initial stay of the tariffs to allow them
| to go into place while the suit proceeded.
|
| The fact that businesses were put in a position to make this
| choice is outrageous in the first place.
| nkohari wrote:
| I don't think anyone is disagreeing it's a shrewd decision by
| the corporations, just that it shouldn't benefit the
| _Secretary of Commerce_. We 're a long way from having to put
| your peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid the perception of
| corruption.
| izacus wrote:
| Calling outright corruption at the expense of citizens as
| "smart" is quite a statement of morality O.o
| pocksuppet wrote:
| In this economy, morality is dead. There is only profit
| extraction.
| petcat wrote:
| Is it insider trading to bet on a Supreme Court verdict? It's
| not like it was a slam dunk. The decision was 6-3.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Yeah, because he's the son of the commerce secretary, so
| (supposedly) has access to the internal deliberations within
| the government.
| petcat wrote:
| You're saying that he had access to all of the Supreme
| Court Justices' chambers?
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| You don't need to have access to everything for it to be
| insider trading, just more than the general public.
| Lutnick would know what case they are making to the
| court, perhaps the confidence of the attorneys in winning
| as well as information on how the case was going.
| parineum wrote:
| All of that is based on public knowledge, including the
| confidence of attorneys.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Supreme Court transcripts of arguments are posted to
| supreme court.gov the same day the arguments are made:
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_tran
| scr...
|
| There's no secret sauce here - their guess as to how the
| case is going is as good as any outside observer, and
| based on the questions made by the justices.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| No, because "the government" isn't one blob. The court
| system is separate from the administration. And the supreme
| court justices aren't giving the internal deliberations to
| someone in the administration, especially when the
| administration is one of the parties in the case.
| mothballed wrote:
| .... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You
| think the people appointing them didn't have internal
| deliberations before they were appointed, including about
| things Trump had thought about like tariffs? Even FDR
| knew the 'separation' was a farce, that's how he
| magically got the court to go along with progressive
| programs they prior didn't support, after the 'Switch in
| time that saved nine.'
|
| SCOTUS largely functions as a post-facto legitimization
| machine for those that appoint them. They do not
| interpret the constitution so much as serve as god-people
| in funny costumes that provide the cultural message from
| god that the actions of their political persuasion were
| legal (or illegal) even in cases where a historical and
| literal reading of the constitution would otherwise find
| you with no way to find them legitimate if not for man in
| black robe say so.
|
| ------ re: "2 of 3" below due to throttling--------
|
| A vote to refund here was not a vote against the admin,
| it was a vote to simplify the laundering of the tax. It
| was a vote to put the money straight into the coffers of
| admin insiders like Lutnick et al financial engineering
| scheme. Meanhwile it did not invalidate tariffs, as Trump
| immediately pivoted to a different tariff structure.
|
| As a second note, the profit here was actually not
| dependent nearly as much on the vote as the insider
| information. The fact the best any rebuttal can come up
| with is the vote might have been 'wrong' is basically
| totally defaulting to the insider trading element which
| means you are totally yielding the underlying premise.
|
| That is, _the only 'vote' against the admin in this case
| would be one that went against their insider information.
| Failure to note this is how the justices and admin have
| swindled you and the public._ The very posing of this
| comment of _rayiner_ et al reveals how they tricked you.
| rayiner wrote:
| But 2 of those 3 voted against Trump! And 2 of the ones
| who voted for him were nominated by a free-trader
| republican.
| parineum wrote:
| > .... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump.
| You think the people appointing them didn't have internal
| deliberations before they were appointed, including about
| things Trump had thought about like tariffs?
|
| Following that logic, it make sense that those 3 voted
| with the administration.
|
| Oh wait...
| mothballed wrote:
| I don't see how a vote against is a vote against the
| administration. The whole point here is their corruption
| machine profited more off the justices voting against the
| tariff and for refunds. The tariffs were a mechanism to
| feign a tax for public purpose but then 'refund' them
| turning it into a tax to private business and Lutnick's
| financial engineering. Funneling the money straight into
| corrupt private enterprise via 'refund' is even easier
| for Trump than having to launder it through public
| coffers.
|
| The key is whether they had insider information given
| their association with these justices.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| >> SCOTUS largely functions as a post-facto
| legitimization machine for those that appoint them. They
| do not interpret the constitution so much as serve as
| god-people in funny costumes that provide the cultural
| message from god that the actions of their political
| persuasion were legal (or illegal) even in cases where a
| historical and literal reading of the constitution would
| otherwise find you with no way to find them legitimate if
| not for man in black robe say so.
|
| You keep changing what you are saying.
| mothballed wrote:
| (1) they likely to have insider information.
|
| (2) Is that SCOTUS functions as a legitimization process
|
| (3) Is that de-legitimizing this particular tariff
| regime, while trump immediately pivots to a new tariff,
| is a best case scenario for the admin insiders as it lets
| them profit immensely from refund corruption while still
| pivoting immediately to a new tariff. The vote was one in
| favor of the Trump insiders.
|
| (4) It is hilarious that the best counter your argument
| et al includes is just glossing over the insider aspect,
| which means you're just yielding the entire underpinning
| to this thread to me, which is more than enough to
| satisfy the premise on its own even if you reject this
| particular vote as being in the service of the admin
| insiders.
|
| Of course, if you just smugly quote half of what I said
| and keep ping ponging one side or the other when I study
| the other half, citing _muh changed argument_ , then you
| can play this fraudulent argument that pretends I
| "changed" what I said. This reveals your argument as a
| deliberate fraud so I will leave you the last word to lie
| further to the ether, rest assured I will not read
| whatever non-sense follows.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| > 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump.
|
| You can blame RBG for one of those. It fascinates me that
| Biden made the same mistake RBG did, I'll always wonder
| how different the would would be if she had stepped down
| and the democratic party had held a real primary.
|
| I don't like trump, I think he stinks. The democratic
| party has a few own-goals in this current game.
| petcat wrote:
| I can't blame Ginsurg. She was still capable of
| performing her duties even at the end. She resisted an
| overtly political retirement and it wasn't even clear if
| a compatible replacement would be confirmed even if she
| did retire early.
|
| It's unfortunate how it went, but I respect her decision.
| andsoitis wrote:
| You don't think her ego got in the way?
| petcat wrote:
| I think she had a principled perspective not to
| politicize her role as a Supreme Court Justice. Maybe her
| ideology was wrong.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I think she had a principled perspective not to
| politicize her role as a Supreme Court Justice.
|
| I can buy that.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I don't like trump, I think he stinks. The democratic
| party has a few own-goals in this current game.
|
| You guys should have nominated Amy Klobuchar as VP so you
| had a credible backup when it became apparent that Biden
| was too old to run again. That's a mistake that's going
| to continue holding you back, since Biden made South
| Carolina the first primary state:
| https://www.masslive.com/politics/2025/06/2028-dem-
| frontrunn....
|
| As Obama said, "never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck
| things up."
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I don't have a "you guys" :)
| expedition32 wrote:
| Important to note that Republican does not automatically
| mean "Trumpist".
|
| Ofcourse most American politicians are pathetic losers
| who immediately cave but judges are generally people who
| are used to dealing with thugs.
|
| And if you ever wondered why judges cannot be fired by
| the Executive branch now you know.
| gruez wrote:
| >.... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump.
| You think the people appointing them didn't have internal
| deliberations before they were appointed, including about
| things Trump had thought about like tariffs?
|
| Given that the 2/3 justices appointed by Trump voted
| against the tariffs, what's the implication here? That
| Trump deliberately picked anti-tariff justices just so he
| can engage in a rube goldberg plan to enact tariffs, buy
| tariff refunds on the cheap, and then have them revoked?
| mothballed wrote:
| Trump can profit either way, the key is the insider
| knowledge to bet for or against them. Admin insiders
| financially engineered where they profited from refunds.
|
| Any vote towards what the insider information pointed to
| was a vote 'for' the admin as they had financially
| engineered their winnings based on that. And meanwhile
| Trump immediately turned to a new tariff structure. The
| vote they gave was the strongest vote in favor of the
| admin insiders they could have given, and meanwhile
| didn't actually stop Trump from continuing on with the
| scheme.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You
| think the people appointing them didn't have internal
| deliberations before they were appointed, including about
| things Trump had thought about like tariffs?
|
| They were nominated in Trump's first term, which had a
| very qualitatively different cabinet assembled around
| Trump, one much less focused on sycophancy and pleasing
| Trump. I don't think anybody in Trump's cabinet 6 years
| ago was thinking about the potential powers a president
| had in being able to change tariffs based on how he felt
| waking up in the morning, much less interrogation of
| judicial candidates based on how willing they were to go
| along with that.
| kowalej wrote:
| I'm shocked you can't see how this is a potential conflict of
| interest. You don't need to know the exact outcome of the SC
| decision to have confidence that things will land in your
| favor. There are certainly all kinds of high level
| discussions with legal experts in the White House that could
| have hinted this outcome as likely. The real question is
| whether there's any personal involvement still with Cantor or
| this was something launched without influence. If there was
| influence though, there will of course be denials and bold-
| face lying (just like with the Epstein involvement).
| spamizbad wrote:
| You don't need a crystal ball to understand a conservative
| supreme court would require the government to refund what
| amounts to an illegal tax on American businesses. If you
| stick your hand into a fire you don't need to speculate as to
| whether you'll get burned.
| rayiner wrote:
| And the en banc appellate court decision was split 7-4, with
| two republican and two democratic appointees voting to uphold
| the tariffs.
|
| This was a very complex decision that ideologically divided
| the courts.
| gruez wrote:
| >Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being
| correct on that bet
|
| ...assuming they held those rights on their books, rather than
| selling it off to other hedge funds.
| energy123 wrote:
| For it to be insider trading, he would have had to have access
| to private information from the Supreme Court, which seems
| unlikely.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why is that unlikely? It would seem to be a very easy thing
| to accomplish. For instance, he could just ask.
| gruez wrote:
| >For instance, he could just ask.
|
| Or just pay attention to the oral arguments. The justices
| seemed very skeptical of the Trump administration, and
| betting markets reacted accordingly.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They could have used inside government legal analysis that
| other people didnt have. You could have predicted this with
| higher certainty if you knew the justices well enough.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Coulda woulda shoulda.
|
| They could have just been smarter than average and found an
| angle others didn't see that paid off for them.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, that's why this will be impossible to show off as
| insider trading.
| NickC25 wrote:
| You forgot to mention that Mr. Lutnik is also a close personal
| friend of a pedophile-turned-Mossad-agent-turned-pedophile
| named Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island. Mr. Lutnik
| deliberately and purposefully lied to congress about it, and
| faced no charges for lying to congress.
|
| In a just world, someone like that would be jailed indefinitely
| and made to publicly take stand about his activities, and
| called out to his face during depositions about his lies.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah that's never going to happen. Nobody in this
| administration will ever be under oath on the topic. Now they
| suddenly think Slick Willie is trustworthy because he said he
| had know knowledge of Trump doing anything wrong. What a
| world.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Presumably you don't consider a House panel to be under
| oath (since Lutnick, a part of this administration, will be
| appearing before one) ?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I will be happy to be wrong, assuming that happens.
|
| I want everyone who associated with Epstein to be under
| oath at some point, and I think we should prioritize
| based on how many pieces of evidence their name appears
| on.
|
| You think Trump will ever let himself be questioned under
| oath? Any rational person knows that his refusal is
| tantamount to an admission, but I bet he does not see it
| that way.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Sadly, you're right on the money here, nobody will ever
| spill the beans.
|
| Problem is Willie knows everything (he was the president
| for fuck's sake) and is just lawyer-speaking his way out of
| admitting that he along with multiple former presidents
| (including the current one) were/are compromised by a
| hostile nuclear-armed foreign actor's (read: "ally's")
| intelligence agency. He can't sing, or the whole charade
| comes apart.
|
| The contagion fallout is massive. This involves several of
| the wealthiest people on the planet, tech leaders, business
| leaders, politicians in powerful countries...and involves
| several major geopolitical actors...and involves some
| unspeakably disgusting actions to children.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Could you go into detail about what you think happened? The
| tariffs were public knowledge, and the suits to invalidate them
| were public knowledge. Are you saying you think the Supreme
| Court justices secretly communicated to the Commerce Secretary
| how they intended to rule on the case, far in advance of
| publishing their ruling?
| wutwutwat wrote:
| That would be insane. That would mean people in the
| government talk to each other and also that they have
| conversations or make deals behind closed doors or that one
| or god forbid all of them are corrupt, which is utter
| nonsense!
|
| Probably just a good guess. At least it wasn't based on
| intimate knowledge of things based on being in a position
| extremely close to everyone involved in all of it. Sheesh.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I'll turn this around: Do you think it is acceptable for
| policymakers, lawmakers or people involved in such a process
| to reap profits more or less directly with (partially non-
| public) knowledge they've acquired?
|
| Because I think not. And I feel pretty strongly about this.
| The conflict of interest is so glaringly obvious that it
| should be completely self-evident why _every voter_ should
| want to prevent, ban and punish any such action.
|
| I feel that anyone involved in this tariff insurance business
| should be able to prove without a shadow of doubt that they
| had no political insider knowledge about the whole thing, and
| I'm extremely skeptical that this is the case (just from the
| pople involved alone!).
| irishcoffee wrote:
| You mean these policymakers?
|
| " House kills effort to release all congressional sexual
| misconduct and harassment reports"
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-kills-
| effort...
| myrmidon wrote:
| Yes?
|
| I frankly do not understand your argument: "Some
| policymakers are sleazy (yes?), so it should be fine for
| all of them to leverage influence/access into personal
| gain" (?!)
|
| This does not make sense to me.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| >with (partially non-public) knowledge they've acquired
|
| What partially non-public information did he have? Be
| specific.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > What partially non-public information did he have? Be
| specific.
|
| How would I know? I'm neither Lutnick nor his son.
|
| My point is that there is an extremely obvious conflict
| of interest here. If your family business is directly
| affected by decisions and information of the public
| office that you hold, then the very obvious risk is that
| you are going favor official decisions that help your
| business (possibly to the detriment of the majority), and
| that you leverage non-public information for personal
| gain.
|
| For this specific case, insider knowledge could be a
| precise understanding on the "shakiness" of the initial
| tariffs combined with an insider picture of ongoing legal
| cases against them (progress and expected success rate).
|
| I'm not saying that Lutnick & sons comitted some kind of
| crime, but if you let your family business overlap with
| your public office this much, then the resulting scrutiny
| is more than justified, and you could make a strong point
| that such a situation should be avoided in the first
| place.
| lowercased wrote:
| might not be 'insider trading' with respect to the court
| decision, but Lutnick had influence with the president and
| could affect tariffs being paid by the various companies who
| were squeezed in to considering selling (or actually selling)
| their tariff refund rights. And tariffs changed many times over
| months, so... looking at what companies actually sold to CF
| might reveal some patterns that raise eyebrows. But nothing
| will be done about it.
| rayiner wrote:
| Cantor Fitzgerald is sleezy, but you've got the reason wrong.
| They're sleezy because they bet against the administration.
|
| But it's not "insider trading." They didn't have insider
| information on how the courts were going to rule--especially
| where it was a 6-3 split with three conservatives siding
| against the administration. And a split in the appellate court
| as well, with two republican and two democrat appointees siding
| for the administration.
|
| And Cantor had nothing to do with imposing these tariffs in the
| first place. Trump loves tariffs. He has been wanting to do
| these tariffs since the 1980s. He imposed tariffs in his first
| term and campaigned on imposing them now.
|
| So you're taking a story about Cantor Fitzgerald displaying
| disloyalty to Trump and trying to turn it into a "corruption"
| story that makes no sense.
| Supermancho wrote:
| This is collusion between the offices of POTUS, SCOTUS, and
| corporate friends that looks like insider trading, from a
| zoomed in lens.
| dmix wrote:
| You're saying Trump doesn't want tariffs? And the SCOTUS
| judges who went on record supporting executive powers to
| tariff was all just a big insider trading scam? And
| corporations were willing to risk a hundred of billions in
| tariffs fees on the odds it might get refunded just because
| some finance company might get a small cut of refunds?
| Supermancho wrote:
| To clarify, POTUS being short for the group POTUS in-crowd
| of the actual POTUS and cabinet, who act in sync.
|
| I'm saying the public tide shifted and the legal reality
| set in that they weren't going to get sympathetic
| rulings...which they don't care about anyway since it's not
| their money and the tariff threats already had any desired
| effects sought.
|
| POTUS was floated the idea that they could enrich
| themselves, so the decision was made, communicated to the
| Secretary of Commerce and to the SCOTUS judges.
|
| > And corporations were willing to risk a hundred of
| billions in tariffs fees on the odds it might get refunded
| just because some finance company might get a small cut of
| refunds?
|
| Nothing to do with them. Narcissists don't worry about the
| future of others, except as a narrative to sell their
| personal ambitions.
|
| Some people don't believe the administration is that
| flippant. I think it's obvious they are having fun.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't have
| inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who read
| the case knew which way the court was going, it was the least
| surprising decision ever. Perhaps the only surprising thing is
| that the court ever heard it.
| seydor wrote:
| is it not a conflict of interest if you facilitate the
| legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| No, it's not a conflict of interest. It's perhaps dumb, or
| morally bad, or several other things.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's sleazy because Lutnick's son bet against the
| administration Lutnick was in, and against one of Trump's
| signature policies. I'd be furious if I was Trump.
| leviathant wrote:
| You're upsetting the kind of people who leave their
| shopping carts in the parking lot instead of putting them
| away when they're done.
| cj wrote:
| > dumb, or morally bad
|
| This is easy to say in hindsight. There was a non-zero
| chance the decision could have went the other way. Also,
| companies aren't stupid. They don't buy insurance against
| things that are impossible.
|
| And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100%
| obviously illegal.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It was non-zero but close to zero.
|
| Companies don't want to deal with the headache for many
| things. It's not a given over what time horizon and how
| much work is involved to get the refund. It's totally
| sensible to sell the claim for 70 cents on the dollar for
| example.
|
| The supreme court absolutely hears cases that are
| obvious. They do it for several reasons - to create
| clarity, to narrow scope, to set a very clear precedent,
| and other reasons.
| rayiner wrote:
| It wasn't "close to zero." The Supreme Court split 6-3,
| with two Trump appointees voting against him. And the
| Federal Circuit, which is the most boring appellate court
| and not political at all, split 7-4, with two democratic
| appointees and two republican appointees voting to uphold
| the tariffs.
|
| This was a case that split both the liberal and
| conservative blocs. Obama's former SG, Neal Katyal, went
| up there and argued for limiting presidential power over
| the economy. One of the justices quipped about the irony
| of Katyal's major contribution to jurisprudence being
| revitalization of non-delegation doctrine, which has
| always been a conservative focus.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Did you read the ruling? Read Clarence Thomas's dissent.
| It's not clear if he _actually_ thinks what he wrote, or
| he just voted that way so he could write a dissent and
| make a strange legal point which probably doesn 't carry
| water but sort of maybe could one day maybe.
|
| If it were close, I think he would have voted the other
| way. The folks on the court appear extremely inclined to
| take the other side on things just as a mental exercise,
| or to be able to write something on the record that they
| find interesting.
|
| It was close to zero.
| rayiner wrote:
| Did you read the ruling? And the appellate court decision
| below?
|
| Thomas joined fully with Kavanaugh's dissent. He wrote
| separately to articulate his view of the scope of non-
| delegation doctrine. He pointed out tariffs and taxes are
| different, in that tariffs implicate international
| relations, which is primarily within the province of the
| president. His analysis is extremely cogent. I was
| actually talking with my wife (we're both Fed Soc people)
| that the administration should have pushed that angle
| much harder in the argument.
|
| Did you read the Federal Circuit en banc decision? You
| don't get two Obama appointees to vote in favor of the
| Trump's administrations unprecedented tariffs when the
| legal issue "isn't close."
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Yes, I read them all.
|
| And, surely you understand that many see using the due
| process clause to make his argument was a stretch. Just
| saying "his analysis is extremely cogent" doesn't make it
| so.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100%
| obviously illegal.
|
| There is an argument in about two months' time as to
| whether or not the Birthright Citizenship clause of the
| 14th Amendment actually guarantees birthright citizenship
| in the US. There is no serious legal argument in favor of
| the interpretation being advanced by the Trump
| administration, that it does not. And yet here we are.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| They weren't buying insurance. There's no insurance
| payout for the companies. They got a small amount of
| money in hand, and lost the chance to reclaim any of the
| tariff refund. That isn't insurance.
|
| Also, the SCOTUS is not a criminal court, it is a
| constitutional court. If a case is heard there, both
| sides have not agreed on "obvious illegality". That is
| unsuprising since in general one side (in this case, the
| administrative branch of the US Government) is being
| accused of illegal behavior - when it comes to
| constitutional rather than criminal questions, most
| parties do not just accept their guilt, but push as far
| as they can towards exoneration.
|
| Frequently, however to _everybody else_ , the case
| concerns obvious illegality.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree, it's like "reverse insurance". I'm not sure what
| is the name.
|
| In insurance, you pay [-$10] to avoid a potencial
| negative risk [-$100].
|
| Here you get money [+$10] instead of waiting for a
| potencial positive benefit [+$100].
|
| Very slightly related
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage
| bumby wrote:
| I think the issue is that someone working in public
| office had influence to affect that probability, and
| their relatives stood to gain from it.
|
| I don't know enough about the ethics laws to know if it
| was strictly illegal, but it does create a smell.
|
| Suppose a county engineer has influence on whether oil
| drilling will be allowed (they don't make policy but
| consult those who do), and prior to approval their
| relatives buy up a lot of land in the area. That engineer
| may not have been the deciding factor, but it seems like
| it runs afoul of ethics laws/standards.
| gruez wrote:
| >if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew
| are illegal?
|
| Did they know it was illegal? Any more than say, the Biden
| administration "knew" that forgiving student loans were
| illegal?
| anon7000 wrote:
| They literally spent a decent chunk of money spinning up
| a line of business that could only make money if the
| tariffs were illegal.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| > Did they know it was illegal
|
| it doesnt have to be black and white. they knew enough to
| spin up a business that when it is overturned they could
| make money... which means they knew the probability was
| high.
| nkassis wrote:
| That's not really the comparable here, you need to find a
| person with vested interest in the outcome of the student
| loan forgiveness program.* Someone that was working
| within the agency responsible for the program and
| actively was in the discussions where the legality was
| discussed. Then made a scheme to financially get
| rewarded. Not only that used his son as a way to create
| the illusion of separation.
|
| * And not just a borrower that wouldn't be anywhere
| similar to this level of conflict.
| seydor wrote:
| even if they were not sure 100%, the fact that
| introducing the legislation is connected to him making
| money is a conflict of interest.
| philipov wrote:
| In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is
| damaging. People who work in finance aren't allowed to trade
| the same stocks as their company is trading, whether they
| have any inside info or not. The assumption is that simply by
| being close to a source of information, you are compromised.
| The same restrictions should apply to those close to
| government. By being family, he is compromised by default.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is
| damaging.
|
| It _was_ damaging.
|
| In 2015.
|
| And then for a bit between 2021 and 2024.
|
| Now it's not again.
|
| You have to enforce these sorts of gentlemen's agreements.
| Just saying "it's damaging" isn't enough to actually make
| it damaging.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Wrong. People who work in finance (I spent years there) are
| allowed to trade stocks their company is trading. There is
| a process to get approval. The equities division at an IB
| might be trading every single name in the S&P500. If you
| sit in the investment banking division and that division
| isn't doing anything related to a name, you are likely to
| get approval.
|
| In this case, the idea that Cantor can't do something
| because the former head is now in a government job is
| crazy. No one "in the business" thinks Cantor is suddenly
| hobbled.
| Ajakks wrote:
| Oh - so the kid went out and he got permission to do
| this?
|
| Where is that? Who approved his request?
| Calavar wrote:
| > In this case, the idea that Cantor can't do something
| because the former head is now in a government job is
| crazy. No one "in the business" thinks Cantor is suddenly
| hobbled.
|
| That's not the idea, and it almost seems like a straw man
| to be honest. The actual idea is that the current head of
| Cantor can't do something because he's a direct relative
| of a high ranking government official whose powers and
| job duties present a conflict of interest for this
| specific set of transactions.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| 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.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > 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 nobody else?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It's an investment bank. They have a million things going
| on, sometimes counter to each other.
| anang wrote:
| I think a lot of people feel like people who have one
| foot in a heavy regulated industry shouldn't have their
| other foot in the regulatory body that regulates that
| industry.
| Calavar wrote:
| > If they couldn't do anything that gave an appearance of
| a conflict
|
| This time I won't say maybe - that's a straw man.
|
| I never said Cantor shouldn't be able to do _anything_
| that even gives the _appearance_ of a conflict. Or
| anything even close to that really.
|
| As you said yourself further up the thread, investments
| of investment bank employees are highly regulated. And
| not only employees themselves, but also their immediate
| family members.
|
| Yet that same level of legal regulation doesn't apply to
| immediate relatives of government officials. We've seen
| frequently with spouses and children of congressmen, and
| now we're seeing it with the son of a cabinet member.
| Yes, this may technically be legal, but legal does not
| equate to just and desirable. This reads to me like a
| serious loophole in the law that needs to be closed.
| gruez wrote:
| >People who work in finance aren't allowed to trade the
| same stocks as their company is trading, whether they have
| any inside info or not
|
| But the supreme court is a separate branch of government
| from the executive, so the analogy doesn't really hold. To
| claim otherwise would require Lutnick playing some 4d chess
| where he's publicly pro tariffs, but secretly anti-tariffs
| and was sandbagging the government's legal defense (can he
| even do that?), all the while not tipping Trump or the MAGA
| base off for being disloyal.
| yunohn wrote:
| Almost all companies issuing stock to employees also ban
| them and their family members and fellow house residents
| from trading in the same stock to avoid insider style
| improprieties and the SEC has frequently prosecuted such
| cases. Wild that congress and WH staff have zero such
| restrictions even in 2026!
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Nope, wrong. Most companies have black out dates around
| earnings releases. Otherwise, good to go.
|
| (and/or have an explicit approval workflow that
| effectively does the above).
| thisisit wrote:
| You mean the guy who kept talking about bringing back jobs to
| US - jobs requiring Americans to screw iPhone parts - wasn't
| debating in bad faith, like you are doing here? I am shocked,
| I tell you. I am really shocked.
| raincole wrote:
| It's not insider trading, but surely it's a conflict of
| interesting? If you ignore all the specific name calling,
| isn't it still quite wrong that one minister can financially
| bet against the administration?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > isn't it still quite wrong that one minister can
| financially bet against the administration?
|
| Why?
| chrisXOXO wrote:
| Because it encourages him to work against the
| administration.
| rayiner wrote:
| What's happening is that the deal stinks, and people aren't
| precisely analyzing exactly why it stinks so they're just
| using it to confirm their priors.
|
| The deal stinks because Cantor bet against the administration
| that its former head is a part of, and against the signature
| policy of the president its former head serves.
| burkaman wrote:
| He presumably did not have access to the court's opinion
| before it was released, but he did have access to internal
| White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced
| ("Mr. President this is illegal and very likely to be
| overturned by the courts"), and he obviously had access to
| the entire federal legal team during the court cases.
|
| I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo
| before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would
| this not be considered material nonpublic information? It
| seems the same as a corporate insider dumping stock because a
| company lawyer privately told them "we're definitely going to
| lose this case".
| phkahler wrote:
| So a Whitehouse insider is going to get a bunch of tarrif
| refund money?
| vel0city wrote:
| Not just a Whitehouse insider, the guy actively doing the
| policy he was probably being advised was illegal and
| would be overturned.
|
| And also probably one of the guys most pushing for this
| policy which was probably advised would likely be
| overturned.
|
| Tariff policy is ultimately implemented by the Secretary
| of Commerce. This isn't some random other staffer in the
| Whitehouse that heard these policies wouldn't go, it was
| _the guy actively doing it_ likely stands to make
| significant financial gains for his actions being found
| to be illegal.
|
| The level of corruption on that is just absolutely
| mindblowing.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| White House legal opinions aren't any better than other
| legal opinions. Opinions are not "information".
| dboreham wrote:
| The Lebowski conjecture.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| Maxatar wrote:
| 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.
| Detrytus wrote:
| 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.
| Maxatar wrote:
| The quality of an opinion has no bearing as to whether
| that opinion is insider information.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| That's fine, to each their own on trying to make
| predictions. I did try to predict it, did it accurately
| (along with many others, this wasn't the hardest thing
| ever), and wouldn't have had any interest in any internal
| memo.
|
| It's a public arena on things like this. I don't think
| even the justices themselves have "material inside
| information" until a little ways through the hearing, and
| people are trying to predict the outcome well before
| that. On the surface that might sound absurd, but it
| isn't.
| LPisGood wrote:
| The non-publicly known strategy they intend to use in
| court is "information"
| vkou wrote:
| Is a lawyer working on a case allowed to short the stock
| of his client?
|
| Why not?
|
| (Hint: it creates a perverse incentive to see your side
| lose the legal argument for your own personal gain.)
|
| And in this case, it's the actual secretary doing it. Who
| has significant influence on the outcome of the case
| (largely in the negative - nothing he can do can make the
| government more likely to win it, but stuff he did has
| the capacity to make the government more likely to lose
| it.)
| gruez wrote:
| >I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo
| before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically,
| would this not be considered material nonpublic
| information?
|
| Was the hypothetical "White House advisory memo" produced
| using any proprietary information? If not, why should it be
| any different than if I hired a bunch of top lawyers to
| produce a private report for me?
| mandevil wrote:
| Because this hypothetical memo was paid for by our tax
| dollars, not your own private money! That means it
| belongs to the American people, not individuals for their
| private gain. Using it for your own gain would be theft
| from the American public.
|
| In this hypothetical case, of course. There is no
| evidence that such a memo exists. But if it did...
| airstrike wrote:
| A travesty, to be sure, but not insider trading.
| jMyles wrote:
| > That means it belongs to the American people, not
| individuals for their private gain.
|
| This is a strong case that there ought not to be any such
| thing as a secret opinion or confidential advice from the
| White House OLC - and I agree with that opinion if that's
| what you're saying.
|
| But it doesn't transform the information contained
| therein to nonpublic.
|
| I'm not saying this whole thing wasn't a total scumbag
| move - it was - but it's not quite the same crime as
| insider trading.
| hnfong wrote:
| Not saying you're wrong, but note that in general
| attorney-client privilege is kind of important as well.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > But it doesn't transform the information contained
| therein to nonpublic.
|
| The legal opinion itself was non public? If they couldn't
| use that they would first have to put up the money to pay
| the legal fees to find out how likely their bet was to
| pay off.
|
| And just to put this in writing too, I would be shocked
| if we don't find out later that a lot of the volatility
| was a way for a few people to make a lot of money. You
| can make a lot of money when there's more volatility. So
| all the flip flopping on tariffs yes/no might very well
| be manipulating markets...
| Ajakks wrote:
| What a week argument - your still making excuses for this
| nonsense. Ridiculous.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, because it was produced by the same people that are
| going to argue the case in court. You can hire the best
| lawyers in the world but they will still have to
| speculate on what arguments the government is going to
| make, and whether there are confidential communications
| showing evidence that there was some consistent rational
| justification for the tariffs and not just the
| president's public posts that leader X was mean to him on
| the phone so he imposed a tariff.
| rayiner wrote:
| You're piling speculation on speculation. First of all,
| there was no such memo saying the tariffs were "very likely
| to be overturned." The Supreme Court decision was 7-3, with
| two Bush appointees voting to uphold the tariffs. The
| appellate court decision was 7-4, with two Obama appointees
| and two Bush appointees dissenting. Second of all, there is
| no evidence that this legal analysis was leaked to Cantor.
| Ajakks wrote:
| Who cares? The Treasury Secretary shouldn't have family
| profiting off fixing illegal policy the Treasury
| Secretary enacted. That should never happen. It is wrong,
| it doesn't explicitly spelled out.
| vel0city wrote:
| Commerce* Secretary. Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce
| which implements tariff policy. Bessent is the Treasury
| Secretary.
| burkaman wrote:
| The two answers I'm hearing to my question so far are
| that either this decision was so obvious that anyone
| could have predicted it without insider information, or
| that this was a split decision that the administration
| could not have predicted ahead of time.
|
| You're right that maybe there never was any internal
| memo, just thought this was funny.
| tzs wrote:
| Wait...how do we know there was no such memo?
|
| We have no reason to believe that if such a memo exists
| it was used improperly, but I don't see how we could know
| there is no such memo.
|
| BTW you've got an extra Justice on the Supreme Court.
| Should be 6-3, not 7-3.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Prediction markets already had it as more likely than not
| that the court would rule against the tariffs
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >but he did have access to internal White House legal
| opinions before the tariffs were announced
|
| yes but the opinion that it was illegal was the received
| wisdom by everybody with any sort of legal expertise in the
| subject. It would have been completely insane if the white
| house staff didn't believe the same. So I guess I'm
| actually surprised at the white house staff believing what
| everybody else did?
| rayiner wrote:
| > yes but the opinion that it was illegal was the
| received wisdom by everybody with any sort of legal
| expertise in the subject
|
| That isn't true and you should really question whatever
| news source told you that. Putting aside that it was 6-3
| in the Supreme Court. It was a 7-4 decision in the en
| banc Federal Circuit, with two Obama appointees voting in
| favor of upholding the tariffs. The lower appellate court
| opinions amounted to 127 pages:
| https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-
| orders/25-1812.OPINIO....
|
| You don't get cross-party splits like that on issues
| where "everybody with any sort of legal expertise in the
| subject" agrees. If anyone with legal expertise was
| telling you that this issue was simple, they're probably
| not very good at their job.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Technically it might not be "insider trading" since most
| information (we assume) was public knowledge.
|
| But members of the government being able to trade on matters
| of government policy is exactly how government corruption
| works. Previous administrations understood this was important
| to prevent (Carter putting his peanut farm in a blind trust,
| the Bush's did the same) but now Trump has made clear
| corruption is just totally fine (why else become president or
| a government official).
| reactordev wrote:
| Divestiture applies to the household.
| khy wrote:
| Could this open Cantor Fitzgerald up to class action law
| suits from consumers who ultimately paid the refunded
| tariffs?
| dboreham wrote:
| Doubtful since any sane person knew the tariffs were not
| legal and would eventually be overturned.
| hedora wrote:
| I'd imagine it'd open the federal government to such a
| suit.
|
| It stole money from consumers in the form of illegal
| tariffs, then refunded the money to people with no obvious
| relationship to the victims.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Cool! How much money did you yourself make on this (given
| that it was entirely obvious, and not leveraging knowledge
| seems silly)?
| vntok wrote:
| Why would you assume the parent would have both a betting
| addiction and enough side money available to make it
| worthwhile?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It actually wasn't the worst assumption ever...
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| A lot. If you remember all the tariff announcements in the
| first months of 2025, the stock market tanked and it was an
| easy buy. The market then reasonably quickly realized many
| of these tariffs weren't going to persist. The payoff was
| fast, and the reason you didn't see a massive uptick in the
| market when the ruling came out was because it was already
| priced in at that point.
|
| Just because something isn't obvious to you, it doesn't
| mean it wasn't obvious to a lot of people.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| To buy after a market dip requires roughly zero specific
| conviction or insight regarding this supreme court ruling
| and its consequences.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| If the market dip is directly caused by X, and you think
| X is going away or misunderstood, it's specific
| conviction.
|
| In this case X was the tariffs. You are out of your
| depth.
| baq wrote:
| such hopeful naivety was passable early 2025. having seen 1%
| of the epstein files, you'd have to be acting in bad faith to
| say there was no collusion.
| behringer wrote:
| Yeah it's not insider trading. It's just that someone on the
| inside engaged in trade... Cmon guys you know there's a
| difference!
| vntok wrote:
| You're right, trading by insiders is not necessarily inside
| trading. Look it up, it's a pretty interesting nerdsniping
| blackhole.
| loudmax wrote:
| The mental gymnastics people are performing in order to
| convince themselves that this isn't the most corrupt
| administration the US has seen in modern history is
| staggering.
|
| If a fraction of the level of skepticism these people applied
| to Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton were applied to Trump and
| his cronies, they'd be demanding impeachment.
| dav43 wrote:
| If his son had half a brain he wouldn't be trading in this
| quasi derivative
| bogtog wrote:
| > This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't
| have inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who
| read the case knew which way the court was going, it was the
| least surprising decision ever. Perhaps the only surprising
| thing is that the court ever heard it.
|
| If this was so obvious, wouldn't there have been more
| competitors pushing down the value of it?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Think about how to actually pull this trade off. It isn't
| pushing a button on your trading app. Competitors cant
| enter this competition easily.
| adampunk wrote:
| I thought his son just had a brain?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| And a small army of folks to do his bidding. Cantor has
| over 10k people, he's the chairman.
| hedora wrote:
| The people selling the debt thought there was a ~ 20% chance
| the money would be collected.
|
| Is there any proof he _didn 't_ have insider information?
| With this administration + court, it's rare when some sort of
| fraud, bribes, or protection money payments aren't at play.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Prediction markets were at something like 60% that the
| court would rule against the tariffs
| apercu wrote:
| Oh? You have some sort of insider knowledge here?
| bix6 wrote:
| No chance you'd make this trade unless you had some unique
| insight to even consider setting it up in the first place.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > It's not insider trading.
|
| One might argue it should fall under a _different_ technical
| label, but whatever label one uses (A) it stinks of
| corruption and (B) it 's only the tip of the iceberg.
|
| People entrusted with government authority to do work for the
| public shouldn't be personally profiting from how they decide
| to wield that authority. Imagine a policeman that arrests
| people while _placing bets_ about how long that person will
| be jailed, what they 'll be charged with, or whether they'll
| be convicted.
|
| The objection that "it's unfair, they know something other
| bettors don't" occurs first not because it's the biggest
| issue, but because it's easier to prove.
|
| The bigger problem is making improper decisions with their
| work-powers in order to personally profit, a trust and
| separation which they've _already_ destroyed by placing the
| bets in the first place.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Cantor Fitzgerald lost most of its staff in the World Trade
| Center on 9/11. Lutnick sued American Airlines, eventually
| settling for $135 million [1]. He claimed this would largely go
| to the family of hte victims.
|
| Turns out most (if not all) of it went to the senior executive
| team, wtih himself being the primary beneficiary [2].
|
| This is also the same Howard Lutnick who the DoJ accidentally
| released a photo of with Jeffrey Epstein [3]. People noticed
| and they removed it. People noticed that too so they restored
| it.
|
| Just so we're all clear who Howard Lutnick is.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/busine.ss/judge-approves-
| ame...
|
| [2]: https://x.com/FinanceLancelot/status/2022877480516813077
|
| [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/howard-
| lutni...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Lutnick was refusing to pay survivor benefits to the families
| until a bunch of other CEOs confronted him in his office.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| > Now if this isn't insider trading [...], I don't know what
| is.
|
| Correct.
| mrwh wrote:
| The executive class are out to get as much as they can as
| quickly as they can while the music plays, then retire to
| whatever luxury boltholt they can prepare. It's FIRE with
| private islands, and without even a figleaf of noblesse oblige
| any more.
| gruez wrote:
| >The executive class are out to get as much as they can [...]
|
| This is just hollow populist anti-elite rhetoric. Who do you
| think sold them the tariff refunds? They're not buying them
| from granny who didn't know any better. They bought it from
| other executives who knew, or at least ought to know what was
| at stake.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Lol. Granny paid for the tarrif then the refund was sold by
| an elite to an elite for 20 cents on the dollar.
|
| Everyone wins except granny.
|
| To be fair, I think some companies didn't raise prices
| because they thought they would be overturned.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Jesus Christ, how pathetic you are. I severely doubt you're
| just a bored billionaire, which leaves only the option of a
| bootlicker. Why do you simp for them? Do you expect a bread
| crump to fall off the table? Or are you a temporarily
| embarrassed millionaire thinking you belong to them?
| tencentshill wrote:
| Worse. They tend to stick around due to their inability to
| stop taking until they die.
| semiquaver wrote:
| > Now if this isn't insider trading (by the literal Commerce
| Secretary), I don't know what is.
|
| I agree that you don't know what insider trading is.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...bought the rights to their potential tariff refunds for
| 20% of the value...
|
| So - with umpteen $billion on the line, and all the big-shot
| lobbyists and Washington insiders and experts that all those
| huge companies had on payroll to advise them - they decided to
| sell at 20 cents on the dollar.
|
| Theory: When the far-smarter-than-us money bets big, they
| _might_ know the actual odds.
| leggerss wrote:
| This type of financialization should be illegal
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Based on what?
| hammock wrote:
| Source? I saw this claim going around but the one actual source
| supporting the claim was more like "we have the cash to buy
| them if folks are willing to sell them" and didn't go any
| further than that.
|
| Via Newsweek, Cantor Fitzgerald has affirmed it "never executed
| any transactions or taken risk on the legality of tariffs."
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-money-...
| burkaman wrote:
| This is contradicted by Cantor Fitzgerald documents obtained
| by Wired which said "We've already put a trade through
| representing about ~$10 million of IEEPA Rights and
| anticipate that number will balloon in the coming weeks".
|
| - https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-
| tariff-r...
|
| So we don't really know, someone is lying. I'd prefer to let
| the congressional investigation play out, but if I had to
| guess right now I would believe Wired over Cantor Fitzgerald.
| happyopossum wrote:
| You've been sucked in by an online lie and are spreading it as
| fact:
|
| "Amid online claims Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons,
| Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, senior executives at Cantor
| Fitzgerald, could benefit from the Supreme Court's tariff
| ruling, a firm spokesperson told Newsweek it has "never
| executed any transactions or taken risk on the legality of
| tariffs.""
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-
| money-...
| pests wrote:
| Not according to the letter obtained by WIRED, as written
| about up thread.
| p_j_w wrote:
| They've denied being involved in naked corruption, I suppose
| we have no choice but to take them at their word.
| nyeah wrote:
| That's some third-world shit.
| beeforpork wrote:
| > while, of course, consumers get nothing
|
| This would have been the case no mattern what.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| It's not that surprising. The entire tariff saga was one
| trading opportunity after another for insiders who knew which
| announcements were going to come out.
|
| Lutnick is a particularly corrupt individual though. He's in
| the Epstein files like Trump and Musk and Thiel. But he also
| took over Cantor by suing the widow of Cantor after his death.
| And now he hands the company to children and has no shame about
| openly nepotistical decisions like this.
| phillipharris wrote:
| But... who would make a bet with a counterparty like that?
| Hello, I'm a trump administration insider, here to make a bet
| with you about the future of one of Trump's policies. You'd
| have to be pretty stupid.
| mustyoshi wrote:
| Just about everyone on the left has been saying these tariffs
| were illegal since day one.
|
| It's not insider trading that they acted on that consensus.
| theptip wrote:
| The reading I've done elsewhere suggests that it's far from a
| done deal that companies will be able to extract refunds from
| the government. For example if doing so offends Trump and
| causes him to try to extract concessions elsewhere. Or if the
| government simply drags their feet on various ways.
|
| "Trump's buddy's son offers 20c/$" does not seem like a
| terrible deal for getting your money out.
| syllogism wrote:
| 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.
| hedora wrote:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/cantor-
| fitzgerald/summary?i...
| caconym_ wrote:
| Isn't Lutnick literally the chief architect of Trump's tariff
| policy? I can hardly imagine anybody _more_ responsible for
| creating this outcome besides Trump himself, who would
| presumably have appointed somebody else if Lutnick hadn 't
| been available.
|
| > I don't see how he had a better view of the whole thing
| than anyone else.
|
| Given the above, you really don't think Lutnick had a "better
| view" of the likely outcomes and timelines, including the
| Trump admin's planned and gamed out _responses_ to certain
| outcomes, than the average Joe on the street? I think that 's
| extremely, uh, _naive_.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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.
| throw_rust wrote:
| I fail to see the problem, people voted for this, did they not?
| hedora wrote:
| If there was any justice at all left in this country, a class
| action lawsuit with the entire US population as the class would
| arrange for the tariff refunds to go to individuals, not
| companies.
|
| That'd neatly address this particular instance of insider
| trading, and probably many other similar schemes that didn't
| make it into the press.
| willmadden wrote:
| What they sold isn't a security regulated by the SEC. There is
| no "insider trading". There aren't enough facts to determine if
| what his sons did was ethical and/or legal.
| abustamam wrote:
| The CF rabbit hole is wild. Somehow he manages to make a lot of
| money during tragedies and economic downturns.
|
| I don't buy into the conspiracies, but it is quite odd how he
| always manages to come up on top.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/911archive/comments/1r5rkk3/howard_...
| ok_dad wrote:
| Similar to how Noem gave a contract for 143 million to an 8 day
| old company with an address at her former political operative's
| home.
|
| The admin is just here to literally steal tax dollars.
| b112 wrote:
| Well it's not, but that aside, how would consumers ever get a
| refund?
|
| Show up with a banana peel at a grocery, and say you want a
| tariff refund for the banana you paid cash for, 6 months ago?
|
| There's no tracking for almost all of tariff affected
| purchases.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Consumers wouldn't. Importers will.
| b112 wrote:
| Indeed. And the concept of passing any refund on is just
| untenable. My example is to highlight how unreasonable such
| an expectation is.
|
| And while this specific tariff situation is silly, and
| annoying, it's been going on forever. There were cases of
| tariffs on lumber from Canada, with presidents of all
| stripes. Some were fought, won in court, and nary a person
| questioned "where is the refund for the consumer".
| qingcharles wrote:
| FedEx, I believe, have stated they will refund all consumers
| who paid them the tariffs, which they then paid to the gov.
| Nothing yet about the fees also incurred by consumers to pay
| the tariffs, but there are at least two class actions filed
| already on this subject, IIRC.
| timmmmmmay wrote:
| Grocery stores track their customers very extensively and
| cash purchases are fairly rare. I'm very confident that
| Costco, for example, knows everything that every member has
| bought from them since the tariffs started.
| g8oz wrote:
| People are quibbling about the definition of insider trading. I
| will just say when fortunes are made by those who just happen
| to be in close proximity to power, it's not good for the
| country. Kushner is the prime example here.
| bdangubic wrote:
| > when fortunes are made by those who just happen to be in
| close proximity to power, it's not good for the country
|
| When was the last time this wasn't the case? Back in the
| 1960's maybe? I started following politics around the time I
| started college - 1993 - and this has been true in my entire
| "following politics" part of life
| tzs wrote:
| > Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being
| correct on that bet, while, of course, consumers get nothing.
|
| Even if they hadn't made that bet were consumers going to get
| anything? The refunds would go to whoever directly paid the
| tariffs, which will generally be businesses.
|
| I doubt that many businesses will go the effort of figuring out
| how much of any price increases they did while those tariffs
| were in effect raised the price for each individual customer,
| and issue refunds for that amount.
| maxerickson wrote:
| B2B stuff will often have the tariff as surcharge rather than
| rolled into the price.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Private businesses get refunded and a payday, prices for the
| consumer stay high (because consumers have proven that they can
| bear them), and inflation goes up.
|
| Clearly, this makes America great again. /s
| ranger_danger wrote:
| What if lowering prices actually resulted in enough extra sales
| that it provided more profit?
| yndoendo wrote:
| I recommend _Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That
| Don't Make Sense_ by Rory Sutherland [0]. It will help
| improve the understanding of marketing and hows business
| operate. This is an over simplified summary.
|
| There are mainly two reasons people buy something.
|
| 1) It is seen as good deal.
|
| 2) It is seen as luxury.
|
| Your premise hinges on only #1 and ignores #2. #1 is also
| limited to select products. How many bed sheets or cars do
| you need?
|
| It also rejects the Friedman doctrine [1]. The continual
| following of this doctrine is what has lead to the
| enshitification of many products and services. Non-living
| wages also came out of following it. Living wages harms
| profits.
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
| mattas wrote:
| I wonder if brands will have a "tariff refund" sale. Make
| everything 20% off until all of the brand's tariff refund is
| passed on to customers. Of course, this wouldn't help the
| customers that already paid the tariff but it could be a good
| marketing ploy.
| bryant wrote:
| Much more interesting would be if the tariffs were refunded
| equally to each person nationwide (interesting in that it very
| clearly then becomes an income redistribution scheme, even if
| on a limited basis).
|
| Possibly a refund of about $500 per social security number.
| Doesn't even have to be in cash, could just directly go towards
| the social security fund if legislated that way.
|
| Tons of ways to fix this quagmire in a way that's beneficial to
| people. But it won't happen.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| And then Trump can sign the checks again....
|
| Sarcasm aside, I agree the refunds should go back to
| consumers, not the importers. I don't have a source, but I
| have to imagine the lion's share of companies that were hit
| with tariffs increased their prices, and the consumer paid
| the bill.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| Here is a source for you to use in the future:
|
| https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-
| is...
|
| The number the New York Fed came up with is 90% was passed
| onto the consumer.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183719
| johanyc wrote:
| I like this idea. It's a good pr move for the business too
| yndoendo wrote:
| They will do this right before raising the prices on all goods
| to 30% before the sale deal.
| jerf wrote:
| None of this matters; this is guaranteed to go to the Supreme
| Court. Too much money, too much precedent. The only thing being
| established now is the battleground as the procedure of getting
| up to the Supreme Court. The actual rulings on the way up to the
| Supreme Court are of minimal consequence.
| jtbayly wrote:
| The Supreme Court already invalidated the tariffs. That's the
| context of this order (and the subtitle of the article).
| abcd_f wrote:
| But they didn't say anything about refunding them and you can
| bet Trump will oppose that and ask the SCOTUS to decide on
| it. They of course have an option to take their time to
| render the decision and then just dismiss the case without a
| comment.
|
| That's what the GP likely meant.
|
| The circus must go on.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Thanks! I guess I wasn't understanding what jerf meant, and
| I hadn't read enough to be correcting people.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But (IIRC) the Supreme Court did _not_ order that the tariffs
| be refunded. They left that issue open in their decision. So
| jerf may well be right.
| jerf wrote:
| As sibling says, the Court very definitely did not order them
| to refund anything. They could have, and they didn't. The
| Court knew from the beginning that this was coming back to
| them.
|
| You may see other judges rule that the refunds don't have to
| be paid, for any of several reasons. Whatever your desired
| outcome is, none of it matters until this gets to the Supreme
| Court. Given the nature of money, it doesn't even matter if
| some higher court refuses to give an injunction against the
| refunds being issued until after the appeal is considered and
| some set of refunds goes all the way through... no company
| that gets any money from a pre-SC refund can really use it
| until the entire matter is resolved at the SC level.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| > As sibling says, the Court very definitely did not order
| them to refund anything.
|
| > You may see other judges rule that the refunds don't have
| to be paid, for any of several reasons.
|
| I think the government might have a bit of an uphill battle
| given arguments they have previously made to courts. For
| example, consider this decision from the US Court of
| International Trade from 2025-12 [0]:
|
| > However, as the Government notes in its response to
| Plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction here, it
| "[has] made very clear--both in this case and in related
| cases--that [it] will not object to the [c]ourt ordering
| reliquidation of plaintiffs' entries subject to the
| challenged IEEPA duties if such duties are found to be
| unlawful."
|
| > <snip>
|
| > Judicial estoppel would prevent the Government from
| taking an inconsistent approach after a final result in
| V.O.S. [] The Government has emphasized this point itself,
| citing to _Sumecht NA, Inc. v. United States_ , which holds
| that "the Government would be judicially estopped from
| taking a contrary position" regarding a prior
| representation involving the availability of relief in the
| form of reliquidation. [] Having convinced this court to
| accept that importers who paid IEEPA tariffs will be able
| to receive refunds after reliquidation, and having
| benefited from the court's subsequent conclusion that
| importers will not experience irreparable harm as a
| consequence of liquidation, the Government cannot later
| "assume a contrary position" to argue that refunds are not
| available after liquidation.
|
| > <snip>
|
| > Additionally, the panel in _In re Section 301 Cases_
| unanimously agreed--as we do now--that the USCIT has "the
| explicit power to order reliquidation and refunds where the
| government has unlawfully exacted duties." [] The
| Government acknowledges that "a decision [to the contrary]
| would be inconsistent with years of [the court's]
| precedent."
|
| Obviously all this doesn't prevent the government from
| appealing anyways, but they'll need to get creative to get
| around their previous representations.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.cit.uscourts.gov/sites/cit/files/25-154.pdf
| jlarocco wrote:
| They didn't have to rule on it because there's already
| precedent that tariffs that shouldn't have been collected
| have to be repaid.
| HardCodedBias wrote:
| The actual question is if Eaton overstepped his authority in
| this ruling.
|
| Instead of ruling narrowly that named plaintiffs would get a
| refund
|
| Eaton expressly said:
|
| "all importers of record" which is all who were subject to the
| IEEPA duties.
|
| It is unclear if this is lawful.
|
| He didn't have to do this at all. He could stuck with tradition
| here. He specifies why he did it in this case, but this opens
| the door.
|
| Also note that he did not open the door to "final liquidations"
| getting refunds (it is unclear how many tariffs more than 180
| days ago were not officially protested).
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| 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?
| dionian wrote:
| same place where your refund is for congress rolling out 10%+
| inflation for years and now your dollar is worth less. its
| theft actually
| jonlucc wrote:
| In practice, the entities who gave money directly to the US
| government are the ones who paid the tariff. Those entities
| should be pressured to refund the consumers, but in practice,
| that's unlikely.
|
| I (unknowingly) ordered something on Etsy from another country.
| UPS delivered the items, then sent me a letter requiring I pay
| the tariff and an extra tariff handling fee. UPS paid the
| government, so UPS should get their money back from the
| government, then refund me. I'm not holding my breath.
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| Economically it is a direct redistribution of wealth. In
| crisis times, Congress acts swiftly to cure wrongs against
| corporations. What about this wrong against every single
| household?
| I-M-S wrote:
| "The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no
| government, only financial power."
| coldpie wrote:
| UPS is definitely pocketing most of whatever refund they get.
| And golly gee gosh what a shocker, the company supports
| Republicans. I'm afraid you've been robbed.
|
| > 'Corporate and industry group political action committees
| have donated more than $44 million directly to the campaigns
| and leadership PACs of the 147 members of the Sedition
| Caucus. Companies and trade associations that pledged to
| suspend donations have given more than $12 million to the
| campaign and leadership PACs of the Sedition Caucus.
|
| > Koch Industries ($626,500), American Crystal Sugar
| ($530,000), Home Depot ($525,000), Boeing ($488,000), and UPS
| ($479,500) have contributed the most money to members of the
| Sedition Caucus through their corporate PACs.'
|
| > Tome's reconciliation with representatives who legitimized
| Trump's attempted presidential coup -- and who may control
| Congress after the November midterm elections -- shouldn't
| surprise us. Trump lavished huge gifts on UPS and Corporate
| America that have made them richer."
|
| > The second Trump presidency has the potential to be even
| more lucrative for UPS, given that the bulk of UPS's
| unionized workers are Teamsters and led by prominent Trump
| ally Sean O'Brien
|
| https://joeallen-60224.medium.com/big-brown-and-the-
| fascists...
| parineum wrote:
| > UPS is definitely pocketing most of whatever refund they
| get. And golly gee gosh what a shocker, the company
| supports Republicans. I'm afraid you've been robbed.
|
| Looks like they've given a pretty similar amount to both
| parties[1]. UPS charging a specific "Tariff Fee" is bound
| to have angered Trump.
|
| [1]https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/united-parcel-
| service/summa...
| kowalej wrote:
| 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.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Prices don't monotonically go up forever, prices come down
| all the time
|
| Edit: Sorry autocorrect thought I said moronically,
| redeeman wrote:
| it does if you continue to pay
| ambicapter wrote:
| stupid humans needing to eat
| baby_souffle wrote:
| Depends on how sticky the prices are. Some things are
| volatile as hell and swing wildly from week to week, some
| things are stable until adjusted and then they stay that
| price for another decade.
|
| Most things are never going to be cheaper than they are
| today. Some things may be cheaper this time next year but
| not by more than a few percent at the most.
| empath75 wrote:
| 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 can get more profits by lowering prices
| and selling more stuff, sometimes by raising prices and
| selling less stuff. It's a trade off. Prices went up
| because of a series of demand and supply shocks enabled
| companies to raise prices. If they had not raised prices,
| there would have been shortages everywhere.
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| I think you're mistaking what's happening here. Companies
| are not discovering greed. People are finally recognizing
| that greed, and the greed inherent in the system, and
| recognizing that just because it's "part of the system",
| it's not OK.
| phil21 wrote:
| 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 to
| continue ramping until it did.
|
| I think plenty of companies were operating off the idea
| that price competition was far more important than it
| turned out to be. I note the baskets of those shopping
| next to me in the grocery store and this rings true. Due
| to a myriad of reasons - consumer behavior being a large
| one of those - buying behavior based on price just isn't
| as much of a thing as it was 30 years ago. Almost no one
| is shopping multiple supermarkets, buying cheaper
| alternatives, buying in-season veggies and fruit when
| it's cheap, waiting for sales to stock up, buying in bulk
| and freezing, using coupons, meal planning based on the
| latest supermarket Sunday circular, etc. only a tiny
| minority of people have been doing so.
|
| Couple that learned helplessness with the monopoly
| situation for many (most?) markets in the US and it's no
| surprise to me that once the dam broke there is no going
| back. The price discovery moving forward is going to be
| much more aggressive. It will take a generation or three
| to get back to thrifty consumer behavior unless we see
| something actually painful to the average person on a
| scale of the Great Depression.
| empath75 wrote:
| > 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.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The word you wanted there was probably monotonically
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Did you mean "moronically" or "monotonically"? I'd accept
| either, just wondering which one you meant.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Hah, apologies, yes autocorrect got me.
| ericmcer wrote:
| This is what the government should really look into. Are
| prices being held at inflated levels to sustain profits? And
| if so why is capitalism not working? Why are competing
| companies not undercutting each other to bring them back
| down?
|
| Can we have small watchdog programs that deeply study market
| conditions for critical resources (like peanut
| butter/eggs/milk/bread/etc.) and produce detailed data on why
| prices are what they are and what they estimate prices should
| be? It would be fascinating to see like detailed breakdowns
| and raw profit margins on different goods instantly.
| cvoss wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| Congress can act to pay back the economically harmed party,
| the consumer. They won't because we live in an oligarchy.
| flawn wrote:
| This answer is the incarnation of capitalismmaxxing.
| Economically speaking you're correct - but morally definitely
| not, companies are for the bigger part not the harmed party
| here.
| wpm wrote:
| Look you can write the funny numbers in whatever accounting
| mumbo jumbo you want, but I paid more to cover the cost to
| the supplier == I paid the tariffs.
| avs733 wrote:
| I don't think the commenter you are responding too thinks
| this is a good thing - they are just describing that it is.
| I read it as just a blunt summary of how absurd this
| situation is.
| greybeard69 wrote:
| No one cares.
| ajam1507 wrote:
| "I didn't kill him, officer. It was the bullet."
| wat10000 wrote:
| In other words: the president can break the law and fuck you
| over by transferring a nice chunk of your money to big
| companies, and none of the lawbreakers will be held
| accountable in any way, and you're not owed a dime in
| restitution.
| evan_ wrote:
| So on Earth 2 in which everything is the same except these
| tariffs hadn't been enacted, would today's consumer prices be
| the same or lower?
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| What businesses were legitimately going to go bankrupt by the
| increased tariffs? I'm not defending the tariffs, mind you,
| but I don't buy that every company had to increase prices to
| offset the additional taxes. Many could've taken the hit and
| been fine, except profits would be down and shareholders
| would be angry.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Lots of them. Profit margins in many sectors are low, lower
| than the cost of the tariffs.
|
| > _except profits would be down and shareholders would be
| angry._
|
| Right. So when profits turn into losses, you expect
| shareholders to be OK with the stock price falling to zero
| and they lose their entire investment? You think this is
| "fine"?
| x3ro wrote:
| 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.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| i personally paid, to UPS and DHL iirc, tariffs. so maybe i
| wasn't actually directly billed the tariff as the importer,
| but i 100% paid it.
| dawnerd wrote:
| There's going to have to be class actions filed against the
| retailers if consumers want anything.
| crazygringo wrote:
| There would be zero legal basis for that. It wouldn't win.
|
| I'm not defending that. Just explaining.
| danans wrote:
| Clearly, since calculating the individual refunds are
| impossible, the companies will be broadly discounting products
| going forward by their effective tariff rate for roughly the
| time the tariffs were in effect. /s
| shagie wrote:
| Depends on how the items are purchased. Some are trying...
| https://www.facebook.com/CardsAgainstHumanity ->
| https://www.getyourfuckingmoneyback.com
| stackedinserter wrote:
| You'll need to ask companies that are going to get that
| government refund.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| 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.
| subscribed wrote:
| > big names such as Costco Wholesale, FedEx and Pandora Jewelry
| --seeking to recoup their money.
|
| Oh, so it was always only about a money transfer from the
| customers (who fully and wholly bore the cost otlf the tariffs
| already) to the companies which will now get the refunds for
| what their customers already covered?
|
| What a robbery.
| duxup wrote:
| 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....
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| > probably
|
| Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher,
| tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Did they actually raise prices, though? I haven't noticed any
| significant jumps; my understanding was that they were
| absorbing (for the most part) the tariffs for the time being,
| but planned to raise prices in the near future.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I
| definitely noticed things that jumped in price.
| thingscoledoes wrote:
| Source?
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| Joint Economic Committee a good enough source? https://ww
| w.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2...
|
| Or Tax Foundation?
| https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-
| tariffs...
| superxpro12 wrote:
| A large cap company I totally dont work at paid 4% of
| revenue in tariffs last year. Our bonuses were cut in
| half. I dont have visibility into our customer pricing.
| It is fucking obscene how stupid this tax is. And all for
| what? So billionaires can get a bit richer? How did this
| help us, like at all???
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Judge actions by their outcomes, not by their stated
| purpose.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It depends on if one thinks 10-20 percent is significant.
| Do you cook your own food - some food items are imported
| during USA winter months and those items went up
| noticeably, also items that are not grown/harvested in
| significant quantities in USA went up. The only things I
| did not see a price increase were US sourced oatmeal, rice
| and flour, stuff where they are selling stuff that could be
| from before tariff times. Coffee went up due to bad
| harvests but the tariffs added to that, and now that
| harvests are back to normal, prices haven't gone back down
| commensurately.
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| I get more or less the same items from the grocery store
| every week. My grocery store shows me purchases going back
| a year.
|
| 3/9/25 - 45 items - $178.98
|
| 3/15/25 - 40 items - $187.13
|
| 3/22/25 - 59 items - $315.29
|
| 3/29/25 - 45 items - $131.36
|
| ...
|
| 2/14/25 - 48 items - $238.15
|
| 2/21/25 - 17 items - $117.49 (used $45 in coupons from
| store loyalty points, actual cost $162.49)
|
| 2/28/25 - 27 items - $165.27
|
| My grocery bill definitely is feeling it, now is it 100%
| tariffs, probably not. But research points to it being some
| what related to tariffs [1,2,3] You'll notice in the most
| recent shops, I have been trying to skip the non-essentials
| when possible to keep my bill lower.
|
| I don't have any other regular purchases with history to
| look back on. It's not like I replace all my consumer
| electronics every 6 months-1 year. Closest thing that I
| have to consistent historical data is 3D printer filament,
| which has gone from $15.99 to $16.99 on Amazon for my brand
| of choice from April 2025 to my most recent order last
| week.
|
| [1] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-food-
| prices/
|
| [2] https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-
| june-17...
|
| [3] https://www.edelmanfinancialengines.com/education/life-
| event...
| throwaway667555 wrote:
| Look at the CPI chart and draw a trend line ignoring recent
| years. You'll see we're living under 2034 price levels
| currently.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Tariffs don't work like that.
|
| These are taxes that businesses have to pay and as a
| result, they pass on to the consumer.
|
| Larger companies have some room (in some cases) to absorb
| some of these costs. While smaller companies do not. These
| can literally put people out of business overnight.
|
| Here is a specific example:
| https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/idaho-business-
| owner-c...
| intrasight wrote:
| The "Importer of Record" gets the refund. I read that a large
| fraction of those importer of record are Chinese companies.
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| Yes, but when the product costs went up to cover their fees
| who paid that? We did. So the "Importer of Record" will
| (maybe) get a refund from the government, while also
| getting the higher prices paid to them from the
| distributors/consumers.
| vuln wrote:
| yes scotus hates poors and is complete bought out by the
| rich
| superxpro12 wrote:
| read from where? Because over 92% of tariff costs were born
| by domestic importers. Thats american companies who then
| offload that tax through higher purchasing costs.
|
| https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-
| is...
| intrasight wrote:
| That article doesn't even mention nonresident importers
| (NRIs). The percentage that are NRIs is not public
| information but it is believed to have grown during this
| trade conflict.
|
| What got my attention on this was this HN comment by
| rstuart4133:
|
| "There are Non-Resident Importers, which are foreign
| companies that import goods into the USA, but do not have
| a presence in the United States. About 15% of USA imports
| come through NRIs. For them this reversal sets up a true
| irony. Trump effectively forced US citizens to pay more
| the imported goods. He thought that money would go to the
| USA treasury. Now the US treasury has to pay it back, so
| it is a free gift to the exporting countries. Like China.
| Truly delicious."
| snarf21 wrote:
| It is _almost_ as if this was a planned wealth transfer that
| was immensely succesful.
| jlarocco wrote:
| Yeah, most of us absolutely are not getting our money back.
|
| The importers pay the tariffs, and they might get a refund,
| but it's unlikely they can distribute the money back to the
| people who they passed the price increase onto.
|
| Imagine I imported 1 ton of rice and paid the tariff. Then I
| split that ton of rice into 2000 one pound bags and sold them
| to two super markets, with a higher price accounting for the
| tariff. Then one super market decided to absorb the price
| from their margins and sell it at the same price as before to
| avoid price shocks. Can I track down the other 1000
| purchasers who paid a higher price? Is it even worth it?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| The other important point is that those 2000 one-pound bags
| sold, so the market accepted the new higher price. Even
| after the tariffs are removed, the higher prices are here
| to stay.
| xp84 wrote:
| Not only can't you track down the 1,000 rice buyers, you
| don't have any legal obligation to, so you 100% wouldn't.
| (Not speaking of "you" just the general case of all
| importers who get refunds).
| wutwutwat wrote:
| Still waiting on getting those freedoms back that we
| temporarily gave up after 9/11 via the patriot act so we could
| get the baddies.
|
| Don't hold your breath for either to be given back.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I suspect that money is involved. We're becoming numb to it.
| bickfordb wrote:
| The latest temporary tariffs are also likely illegal.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Well if it works, they're gonna keep doing it.
| teeray wrote:
| Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be an express
| lane for litigation similar actions like this.
| vuln wrote:
| we can't even do that with violent criminal let alone white
| color criminals. lol
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| I thought those were on very solid ground commonly used by
| past administrations?
| bickfordb wrote:
| Section 122 has rarely been used. State AGs announced
| lawsuits today: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/trump-
| tariffs-state-ags-sue-...
| UltraSane wrote:
| There is no excuse for how long it took the Supreme court to
| decide this very obvious case.
| vuln wrote:
| they waited until the robes slowed down.
| oofbey wrote:
| In terms of policy this is a truly massive gift to importing
| companies. They had to pay massive amounts of tax to import
| goods. Analysis shows most (but not all) of the tariffs were
| passed on down the line to consumers of the imported goods or
| their derivatives.
|
| And now they get it all back! If they can figure out the
| paperwork. Which I expect most will, because if you import
| things and pay tariffs, you have to be good at govt paperwork.
|
| Wow. I don't know what this means. But it's a huge windfall to
| a very specific horizontal slice of the economy - cutting
| across industries and supply chains. Just whoever happened to
| be doing the importing gets a giant present. So bizarre.
| Economists will write about this case study for decades.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| I like Class Action lawsuits for $100 please
| dweinus wrote:
| There is no probably; we not getting our money back. In fact,
| any of the money that has been spent in the meantime (say to
| make up for wealthy tax cuts or to expand military or border
| funding) we get to pay again!
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Two things is that we won't get money back and price of stuff
| is still going up. add on to that the companies getting refunds
| are pocketing the money.
| empath75 wrote:
| I hate the tariffs, but giving the money back to the
| corporations would be absolutely _grotesque_.
|
| Every company that collected a tariff fee needs to refund it as
| they collect their own refunds.
| vuln wrote:
| scouts got paid off by big corps
| wat10000 wrote:
| 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
| executive for decades. For decades, people have been warning
| that this was setting up for major abuse if you got a
| particularly bad president. Well, guess what....
| endemic wrote:
| > Congress needs to step up and take its power back from the
| executive.
|
| Won't happen with this administration at least; the
| expectation being that unless you are a yes-man, you'll be
| denounced as "not loyal" and voted out.
| doom2 wrote:
| Just wait until the next Democratic president is elected. The
| current crop of Republicans will suddenly remember that
| Congress can exercise this power.
| suzdude wrote:
| _courts / SCOTUS let the government roll out a massive and
| obviously illegal tax on citizens for a long time._
|
| The don't forget about congress. 216 GOP congressional reps
| voted to handicap congress's ability to halt tariffs. For much
| of the current session of congress, their calendar wasn't
| counting days.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/house-republicans-block-con...
| epolanski wrote:
| > Absolutely absurd that we're at this point.
|
| It's not really, this is the result of having a flawed
| democratic system.
|
| What do Turkey, Philippines, Russia, Belarus, Hungary,
| Nicaragua, etc and now US have all in common?
|
| They are ALL presidential or semi-presidential republics where
| a single person "rules" without needing to face opposition in a
| parliament nor even requiring support from its own party.
|
| Winner-takes-all democracies, aren't democracies if only part
| of the electors is represented in the executive.
|
| Presidential republics are super dangerous, they combine the
| perils of dictatorships with a cherry on the cake of being able
| to claim popular mandate.
|
| Seriously, it's not a coincidence that the last parliamentary
| republic to turn into an authocracy has been Sri Lanka 50+
| years ago.
| shin_lao wrote:
| Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers
| will try to make money out of this...
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course,
| lawyers will try to make money out of this...
|
| What do you mean unclear? The ruling says that certain of the
| tariffs were always illegal.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's 100% clear, and even if it weren't the government already
| conceded that the tariffs are refundable to get this far. If
| the tariffs were not refundable, that would mean that the
| injury from them is irreparable, and they would have had to be
| enjoined pending the decision.
| benrutter wrote:
| Lots of comments along the lines that tarrifs were mostly passed
| down indirectly to consumers, who aren't entitled to refunds.
|
| I definitely agree on principle, it sounds pretty tricky to see
| how proving "I paid $x more for groceries because of tarrifs"
| would work in practice.
|
| Does anyone know of policy suggestions for how that could work?
| downrightmike wrote:
| Most everything was probably bought with credit/debit cards.
| The individual records exist. Just using your Amazon etc order
| history should be dead simple
| 9dev wrote:
| you would need to prove what part of the amounts you paid
| were due to tariffs, and which were ordinary price changes.
| All vendors would need to publish that information, and be
| honest about it. Don't see it coming.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The real thing is, price changes tend to be _proportional_
| to tariffs. If the tariff was $20, the consumer got charged
| $40 more. But not uniformly -- every price is different,
| there are other non-tariff price changes too, prices can
| increase before or after tariffs not exactly at the same
| time, etc.
|
| If companies want to try to refund customers and come up
| with their own formulas for that, that's great. But usually
| there isn't some objective right answer that can be imposed
| externally.
| benrutter wrote:
| I think the tricky bit is less proving you bought something,
| and more proving that the thing you bought _cost more than it
| otherwise would_.
|
| As I understand it (which isn't a lot), if you paid a tariff
| on an overseas order you're theoretically due it back,
| although that might require taking the government to court,
| which is gonna cost more than the settlement for most people.
| ranyume wrote:
| You put the money on an investment pool and pay the citizens
| back in:
|
| * Direct Cash (using some equation for impoverished households)
|
| * Infrastructure
|
| * Better life conditions
|
| No other uses for this money. The returns and the uses of this
| money must be public.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Excuse me, this is the Inited States we're talking about.
|
| You're getting mighty close to socialism there citizen.
| ranyume wrote:
| I'm more of an anarchist myself, so I think it's a fair
| situational compromise!
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Worst president ever.
| freetonik wrote:
| There was an interesting case in Finland. Finnish customs used to
| apply a 22% tax (ELV) on top of the car tax for imported used
| cars from other EU countries. On top of that, Finnish law
| required VAT to be charged on the car tax itself.
|
| There were multiple court cases and this practice was found
| unlawful (and actually against EU law). But the government did
| not issue automatic refunds, and instead requested that people
| "actively appeal" with some time limits. They also refused to pay
| interest on the money withheld.
|
| AFAIK, only about 50M Euro was paid back. A lot of funds gathered
| between 2002-2005 was never returned.
|
| I've been living in Finland for 10+ years, and this whole story
| was super surprising for me to learn because the prevailing
| notion among people here is that Finland is the land of law, and
| everything is done correctly and legally, always, and we can and
| should trust the authorities.
| redeeman wrote:
| every single so called "nation state" is in reality just a
| regime, they ALL do this. They are no different than the mafia.
| You can choose between so called "don socialist" and "don
| fiscally-resonsible", yet they are identical twins with a
| different haircut.
|
| No organisations or regime has ever considered itself
| illegitimate. The big guys consider smaller guys legitimate or
| illegitimate, but its just ink on a page.
|
| Finland (and _ALL_ other countries) is an illegitimate regime,
| collecting its protection money, telling you to pray it does
| not alter the deal any further
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Ah, yes, the whole world is against me. Do you have anything
| meaningful to say?
| undeveloper wrote:
| yeah that's the trade off of having a state. the alternative
| is getting mugged and having to pay ExxonMobil Police Task
| Force sponsored by Verizon to get your shit back (or deciding
| it's not worth the cash).
| shevy-java wrote:
| Hmm. The "active request" is quite common though. I agree that
| this is unfair, since it is theft, IMO, but Finland is not the
| only one forcing active engagement to get your money back. Even
| when the government stole that money from the people.
|
| > we can and should trust the authorities.
|
| Well, Finland has a fairly competent government usually for the
| most part. That mantra will not work in many other countries
| though - such as Germany. Just look at what Merz is doing; his
| left hand does not know what the right hand should do ...
| AnssiH wrote:
| > There was an interesting case in Finland. Finnish customs
| used to apply a 22% tax (ELV) on top of the car tax for
| imported used cars from other EU countries. On top of that,
| Finnish law required VAT to be charged on the car tax itself.
|
| There was no VAT payable on the car tax of imported cars, only
| the ELV (ei-arvonlisavero, literally "not value added tax").
|
| The ELV idea was that for locally bought new cars you did have
| to pay VAT on car tax, but for used EU imports that was not
| legally possible (cannot charge VAT again when importing used
| item from another EU country), so an equivalent non-VAT tax was
| invented so the full tax (inc. VAT/ELV) stays the same.
|
| But this was unfair for e.g. the reason that Finnish companies
| buying cars could deduct Finnish car tax VAT on local new cars
| on their VAT return but not the car tax ELV on imported used
| cars (since it was not VAT).
| siliconc0w wrote:
| 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.
| eitau_1 wrote:
| It's even more to blame given that it stripped the NEA and
| IEEPA acts of legislative guardrails in 1987.
|
| [0] https://fivepoints.mattglassman.net/p/the-court-ieepa-and-
| th...
| flawn wrote:
| To blame in a second order but this is the admin's work
| overall, they shouldn't have tried to fund their PACs and
| pocket this money into their family & friends' bank accounts.
| Just shows how broken the system is.
| scoofy wrote:
| 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.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Right. I'm okay with blaming both.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| 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.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| So corporations get refunds, I'm sure they'll issue refunds to
| consumers any day now.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| One thing I don't see mentioned enough with the whole "the
| consumers paid these tariffs! we should get refunds!"... We
| "paid" not just in higher prices, but in many layoffs, reduction
| in working hours, skipped bonuses and raises. Companies that get
| 'refunds' will have an opportunity to use that money to rehire
| and repay workers. I'm cynical enough to think that will happen
| in large measures across the whole country, but I'm hopeful
| enough to want to see it happen nonetheless.
|
| Delayed refunds won't even start to repair the damage done by
| bankruptcies triggered by high tariffs, the snowballed cost of
| tariffs impacting multiple steps in the supply chain, the
| emotional toll on families and communities having to deal with
| less money and rising prices. But rehiring and getting some
| regions and communities back to work might be a step in the right
| direction.
|
| EXCEPT WE NOW HAVE A 15% GLOBAL TARIFF ONGOING. And a lunatic
| administration that will fight tooth and nail for years to keep
| this going as long as possible.
|
| Trump "loves" this country so much it hurts me.
| zoobab wrote:
| "use that money to rehire and repay workers"
|
| or give it to shareholders.
| philipallstar wrote:
| They only do that after tax, so there'll be more tax paid if
| they do that.
| xp84 wrote:
| Everything is taxed including payroll.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Shareholders only want money when a company can't reinvest it
| effectively.
|
| Reinvesting it to generate more revenue now that prices are
| lower again is the obvious capitalist thing to do.
|
| The companies aren't going to rehire workers out of charity.
| They do it because it makes them more money.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Companies that get 'refunds' will have an opportunity to use
| that money to rehire and repay workers.
|
| Why on Earth do you expect a single-time payment with no
| strings attached to make companies think some market is
| profitable so they should invest in it?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Unsure where you got that from? If a company that has had to
| lay off staff and reduce hours because of increase in
| expenses because of tariffs, then they get a chunk of money
| back, trying to 'get back' to where you were before -
| headcount, wages, etc - might be on your mind, and might be
| possible with a one-time refund of ideally a sizeable portion
| of your tax. However... _we still have extremely high tariffs
| in place_ so the effects of higher input prices are still
| ongoing (and ramped up in some cases).
|
| If our tariff structure went back to, say, October 2024, and
| companies who'd paid some inordinate tax - forcing layoffs
| and reductions - got a chunk of that back - and the taxes
| went back to what they were - there'd likely be some return
| to hiring and raises as before. But we can't get back to that
| any time soon with an administration hellbent on extracting
| as much from _us_ via tariffs as possible.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The reason companies invest is not because they have money.
|
| And edit because I explained it badly:
|
| That means that yes, getting the tariffs back can make them
| hire, because there may be more people wanting to buy
| things. Sending them the tariffs money will do absolutely
| nothing.
|
| But even the first part isn't guaranteed, because you can't
| rollback the economy, things don't return to where they
| were, they go into some other place.
| book_mike wrote:
| Good. Perhaps the administration should follow the law.
| titzer wrote:
| The past 20 years have been an endless series of wealth transfers
| from commoners to the wealthy. This is Oligarchy.
| whh wrote:
| I don't usually like to get involved in US politics as I'm not
| American, nor do I live in the US. But I will say this: the dildo
| of consequences rarely arrives lubed.
|
| Read from that what you will... as a voter, or the POTUS.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Some of us knew about the un-lubed dildo of consequences. And
| warned our fellow countrymen. But they appear to have joined a
| cult and were immune to reason. Now we are all riding the said
| dildo, whether we asked for it or not.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I do find it kinda crazy that we had a specific policy
| surrounding tariffs (Smoot-Hawley) that was in the center of the
| worst economic collapse in US history.
|
| And now, less than 100 years later we're like "hey let's try that
| again!"
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-average-u-s-tariff-rate...
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean honestly that's about right. As soon as it falls out of
| living memory people forget why the fence was there and tear it
| down.
|
| Expect rhymes from the 1930's--an economic depression, tension
| leading to another world war. Fun stuff ahead.
| nekusar wrote:
| And notice that the refunds are TO THE COMPANIES.
|
| This was the plan from the get-go: 1. Illegal
| tariffs made 2. Companies pay tariffs 3.
| Companies sell goods with tariff passed on 4. tariffs
| deemed illegal 5. companies get refunds on tariffs
| 6. COMPANIES KEEP TARIFFS 7. The customers get fucked.
| trymas wrote:
| 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?!
|
| Masterminds!
|
| ...and now they need to refund it.
|
| NB: also puts into perspective how numb I became about reading AI
| and AI related sums of money, and how crazy actually those
| numbers are.
|
| [0] off course many knew that it's crazy way before it happened.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_bud...
| aduffy wrote:
| They need to refund it *with interest*, according to filings
| cited in the article.
| mejutoco wrote:
| 6-7 percent interest.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| The rest is financed by debt. The theft-class stole the rest
| from the govt thru debt, and expect the rest of us and the
| following generations to deal with the fallout while they sit
| on top of their obscene gobs of cash insulated from the fire
| they created.
| microtonal wrote:
| _Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas,
| alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ?_
|
| Maybe that was never the point. You present it as retaliation
| against 'countries that are out to get us'. Introduce the
| tariffs, companies pay the tariffs by increasing prices for
| consumers, get the inevitable loss in court, return the tariff
| money to the companies.
|
| You just transferred $130B of wealth from citizens to
| companies.
|
| Bonus: people are now used to the higher prices, so post-
| tariffs your profits are also higher.
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| The whole point is "$130B is chump change for the problems
| caused" and that's true if companies as well
| functionmouse wrote:
| Companies will make far more than 130b off this. There's no
| way they only raised prices just enough to cover the 130b
| and the labor required for the internal policy changes.
| This was a justification for price gouging. Which they will
| not stop doing.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Sounds like the opposite of trickle down economics.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Trickle down economists were right, they just got the
| direction wrong
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| I had the same thought. Even if it wasn't the original
| intent, it sure is a preferable outcome.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| It was also used to frame why the new tax cuts were
| justified, even though the optimistic math never worked out
| either.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Don't forget blatant insider trading every time new tariffs
| were announced. It's really a win-win-win situation for the
| US oligarchy.
| foxyv wrote:
| They also put out of business a bunch of upstart businesses
| that could threaten their oligopoly. In addition they
| acquired huge tracts of agricultural land for cheap from all
| the farms that went bankrupt.
| bluegatty wrote:
| No, they are not that smart.
|
| Even if the tariffs are not a lot, they are potent
| negotiating leverage.
|
| They def knew they were lying about much they were collecting
|
| They def knew they were lying about who is paying
|
| They lied to the public about that and got a bit of extra
| creme in the bag but the effect was mostly leverage, which
| 'kind of worked'.
|
| They could have very effectively used illegal tariffs to
| actually do 90-deals-in-90 days, knowing the case would take
| time to draw out.
|
| But - they have no plan.
|
| Trump does not think 9 months ahead - he has grudges,
| grievances, and he pursues whatever grievance he wants to
| that day.
|
| He doesn't forget and will push his staff to go against old
| enemies
|
| The point is not to improve the economy, bring back jobs -
| the point is to 'Look Tough' and 'Stick it to the Libs and
| Foreigners' and to get elected again, failing that, rig the
| elections (note, his secret signed Executive order with all
| sorts of things regarding elections)
|
| The 'high visibility' of ICE is not a bad thing for him - it
| very much in purpose to show MAGA base that he's cracking
| liberal, immigrant and brown people heads.
|
| Jamming those Somalis on the concrete is exactly the optics
| he wants for his base.
|
| It was only until people started dying when newsmax/fox
| started questioning the legitimacy and some support is lost -
| and not even that much among the base.
|
| Same thing with tariffs: he will play grievance, the 'Liberal
| Courts' are against, him blah blah and MAGA will be fine with
| it.
|
| The problem is that Core MAGA is maybe really only 20% and
| Soft MAGA another 15% and that's not enough to win.
|
| But it's almost.
|
| Narrative, performance, grievance, populism, social media,
| information sphere - that's it.
|
| It's Post-Truth.
|
| People keep talking about these through the lens of the
| 'issues', it's completely wrong headed - policies don't
| matter, only perception etc.
|
| Reality does have a way of sneaking through though, and
| 'hardball reality' can change minds. People do understand
| Epstein, tariffs when they pay attention, unemployment,
| prices, 'war mostly bad' etc. etc..
|
| This is White House Reality TV, not really policy and that's
| the best way to understand it.
|
| The entire Cabinet have completely been unable to explain the
| tariff policy - they keep changing their views there is no
| consistency - it's the same with the war in Iran - everyone's
| saying different things, objectives are unclear.
|
| It's irrational too think that there is 'policy' here, this
| is whim, impulse, populism.
| kgwxd wrote:
| You really think Trump is orchestrating any of this? He
| reads the script he's given.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| "Trump brags in Oval Office that his billionaire pals made a
| killing in stocks after he pulled the plug on tariffs"
|
| > _"He made $2.5 billion, and he made $900 million! That's not
| bad!" Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab
| and then NASCAR team owner Roger Penske._
|
| https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionair...
| lokar wrote:
| Friends? America has no friends, only client states.
| lokar wrote:
| 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.
| kubelsmieci wrote:
| Don't antropomorfize countries. Countries can't have
| friends. There are only common interests. Or opposite.
| davedx wrote:
| How about people?
| lokar wrote:
| I think it's legitimately hard to say. Most Americans
| know very little about international affairs, and care
| even less. I think interpreting broad opinion surveys can
| be fraught.
|
| So, who do you count? everyone? only the informed? only
| people with strong views? Or do you assume people support
| the views and actions of the people they voted for?
| lokar wrote:
| I said "Trump/MAGA", which is the person and controlling
| faction in US politics
| epolanski wrote:
| 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.
| lokar wrote:
| From the 2nd half of the 20th century until Trump there
| was the view that the US lead a large group of "western"
| democracies (in the sense that Japan is "western") in a
| loose coalition that was NOT zero sum. The US provided a
| lot of benefits to others, this collaboration produced an
| overall surplus[1], which the US got a large share of.
|
| The new view seems to be based on a zero sum,
| transactional view of international affairs. In this mode
| every interaction must clearly benefit the US more than
| any other participant. We have to clearly "win" every
| time.
|
| [1] and this is not even counting 2nd order "surplus"
| from things like no longer having to fight world wars.
| tootie wrote:
| It's unbelievable he's still given any semblance of credence
| for anything he does. Trump is just palpably stupid. He is bad
| at absorbing information, he is bad at analytical thinking, he
| is impatient, vain and rash. Aside from his tenuous legal
| justification, he never once publicly expressed even a
| fundamental understanding of the basic mechanics of tariff
| collection nor what balance of trade actually means. You'd
| constantly see his proxies on TV just put words in his mouth to
| bend his foolish policy into some coherent. And we're seeing it
| again with the attack on Iran. No strategy, no achievable
| objectives, no comprehension of basic facts on the ground. He's
| really really really just stupid.
| hightrix wrote:
| > tariff war against enemies
|
| This is an interesting way to frame a tax on Americans, but it
| aligns with this administrations actions.
| arunabha wrote:
| It's clear that there was no reasoned thought behind the tariff
| push. Tariffs _can_ work if implemented in a principled way and
| coupled with a complementary industrial policy to develop
| critical sectors of the economy.
|
| Instead, we had a completely chaotic implementation of tariffs
| which seemed to be completely at the whim of Trump with zero
| supportive industrial policy. So much so that the term 'Taco'
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out was
| coined to describe Trump's approach.
|
| The charitable explanation is that Trump had no plan and was
| making it up as he went along. The less charitable explanation
| is that the chaos was an intentional feature to enable a quid
| pro quo of favourable policy in exchange for under the table
| payments via crypto or 'investments' in his family's various
| businesses.
|
| When you couple completely illegal application of a supposed
| 'emergency' to invoke tariffs with a chaotic, whim based
| implementation, is there any wonder that they failed?
| everforward wrote:
| The studies I've seen seem to indicate that tariffs can work
| but are like running with scissors.
|
| The artificially reduced competition will spur buying
| domestic products, but can also make domestic producers
| complacent. They don't develop new features because they have
| an almost captive audience, until foreign producers advance
| enough that people will pay the tariff premium for better
| foreign products.
|
| Then it's a catch-22. Domestic producers are behind on
| technology so killing the tariffs will bankrupt them, but
| raising the tariffs only leans into their complacency.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I had the same thought, but really I think a lot of it is just
| spectacle for his more gullible followers.
|
| I mean, FFS--we have a nominally Republican candidate who
| campaigned on _raising_ taxes and was elected anyway!
|
| You'd have to be pretty gullible to think that raising taxes on
| imported goods won't result in price hikes at the checkout
| counter.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| 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=47238951
| epolanski wrote:
| 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.
| edaemon wrote:
| It's nonsense, that's why it's hard to understand.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Next time you wonder why a Trump supporter has a bad
| argument, remind yourself there was a nonzero number of them
| who literally drank bleach and Lysol after he told them too.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Tariffs are a cost a country incurs upon itself to protect
| industries that are critical, not for their profits, but for
| the capabilities they offer.
|
| It's paying more for something just to keep it domestically
| available for purposes of national security.
| blitzar wrote:
| I am old enough to remember when the great minds at DOGE found
| $10T a year of fraudulent Social Security spending which would
| have cut the total governement spending from $7T a year to
| negative $3T.
|
| The DOGE refund cheque is of course, in the mail.
| dude250711 wrote:
| _> All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all
| countries will pay up to USA._
|
| Sounds a bit like Brexit.
| levzettelin wrote:
| > Astronomical tariffs [...] and from all of this they got only
| $130B ?
|
| Which is it? A number can't be small and large at the same
| time.
| californical wrote:
| To steel-man their sentence, it's a large number to extract
| from US citizens, nearly $500/person. But it's a small number
| in terms of government deficit and current spending
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The point is to bankrupt the country so the robber barons can
| buy up all the assets for pennies on the dollar.
| perfectstorm wrote:
| this reminds me of the Indian government's (read Modi's)
| demonetization efforts of 2016 which caused 80+ deaths and huge
| headaches for the common people. In the end, more than 99.3% of
| the demonetized money came back in circulation. Elect a clown,
| expect a circus. true for the oldest democracy in the world and
| also true for the largest democracy.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| The $130B is only part of the economic costs of the tariffs.
| Many companies and people changed their buying behavior, either
| paying more to a domestic company or maybe a company in a
| country with a lower tariff rate or changed their behavior to
| not require an item all together. We've also heard about small
| companies that have gone out of business.
|
| I'm not an economist but I assume economists are writing papers
| about this kind of thing to estimate the effects.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean 130 billion is a significant amount of money, and it's
| more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average
| consumer and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers (either
| forcing them to move to the US or more friendly countries). The
| deficit wasn't built in two years and I don't think it could be
| solved in two years either.
| jmward01 wrote:
| The people harmed here were the US public and they are just going
| to continue to be harmed. The right answer is people go to jail.
| Until people start going to jail, being disbarred, etc, this will
| keep happening. This isn't a remedy. This is continuing the
| cycle.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| By "people go to jail" you mean Trump, right? Right?
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| The American people will be robbed blind and beaten into
| submission until there is a reason not to. It's that simple. They
| have NEVER been punished, why would they stop?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Chaos is a ladder.
|
| Trump doesn't care who went bankrupt or lost money, he was able
| to create a whole pile of red number buying opportunities for his
| friends in the know. And for himself.
|
| It's now an age of oligarchy, stable corporate capitalism and
| gentlemanly bourgeois behaviour and the appearance of "rules
| based order" and equally brokered commerce is out, schoolyard
| bully attitude and "give me your lunch money" is in.
|
| If you still want to profit, you make friends with the right
| people, kiss the ring, and get permission to become a highwayman
| or parasite like the rest of them.
|
| At the bottom, is us. I don't think any election can put the cork
| back in this bottle. The only thing that will end this decline is
| an angry non-compliant populace that is sick of getting a very
| bad deal.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Has anyone else noticed this? In our area, it seems in 2025 a lot
| of local businesses (ie local toy stores, etc) have closed.
| Presumably tariff pressures hurt (among other affordability
| issues).
|
| The big players can restructure supply chains. Small businesses
| can't. The mom and pops seem to suffer.
|
| I'm hoping there can be an infusion of $ into those companies and
| maybe stimulate a little growth, or at least survival through the
| Trump years.
| baggachipz wrote:
| > The big players can restructure supply chains. Small
| businesses can't. The mom and pops seem to suffer.
|
| This is by design. No doubt the large corporations who kissed
| the ring and gave gold statues will be the first to receive
| this money.
| bwb wrote:
| I ache for the day we were governed by people who were competent
| and wanted to govern.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Wouldn't it be simpler to implement a 'spend-forward scheme'
| rather than returning? For example, spend that money on research
| grants and health care. It is returning the money to the people.
| A man can dream, no?
| padjo wrote:
| Sounds like communism to me.
| yapyap wrote:
| Wonder if the companies (who have been mostly passing on the
| tariffs to the end user) will just add the refunds to their
| profits or give back in some way
| smm11 wrote:
| So we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?
| devin wrote:
| Justice delayed is justice denied.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Good luck with that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When Biden's student loan forgiveness program was determined to
| be illegal (twice) by the Supreme Court, nobody ordered that the
| recipients give it back.
| platevoltage wrote:
| This one needs a bit more time in the oven.
| amelius wrote:
| At least our president made a lot of lawyers happier.
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| If you're an American consumer who had the tarrifs passed on in
| higher prices wouldn't you feel totally robbed by this whole
| ordeal?
| Bloating wrote:
| If consumers indirectly pay the cost of tariffs, who pays for the
| dead-weight loss of taxes on domestic employers?
| thayne wrote:
| Trump should be personally liable for this. He knew it was
| illegal but he still did it, to the harm of US citizens.
| gorbachev wrote:
| They will never pay this without a fight.
|
| Good time to specialize in "tariff litigation", if you're a law
| firm.
| squeegmeister wrote:
| "We live in the age of computers," Eaton said. "It must be
| possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it
| doesn't need a manual review."
|
| lol
| shevy-java wrote:
| Trump is not a competent person. How did he ever get rich?
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Sounds impossible. As everybody knows, you need to be competent
| to get rich.
| platevoltage wrote:
| He won the sperm lottery. That's how he got rich.
| sporkland wrote:
| So the consumer ate the tariff (I saw somewhere that they just
| got passed on for the most part). Now the companies are just
| gonna get the money back and either enrich their exec staff or
| shareholders?
|
| It feels like a company should have to prove they didn't pass the
| tariff on to consumers in order to collect this.
| netfortius wrote:
| Ha, ha, ha. Someone, somewhere, ordering government to do
| something. Thank you for the best laugh today.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Love this:
|
| The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward
| and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the
| government hadn't yet formalized its position on refunding the
| tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old
| law. "Your position is clear," the judge said. "The Supreme Court
| told you what your position is."
| wat10000 wrote:
| If I illegally forced a bunch of people to give me $130 billion,
| the courts would not stop at making me pay them back. I and all
| my co-conspirators would go to prison forever. We should accept
| nothing less here.
| wiseowise wrote:
| But hey, we've got to own the libs!
|
| I swear to God, the generation that voted the most for this
| stupid SoB will go down in history as the most stupid so far,
| like straight out of the Idiocracy.
|
| Trillions of world wide economic damage, irreparable damage to
| transatlantic cooperation, death of post ww2 order. All because
| McFuckity Fuck saw online that brown man bad and there's
| inexplicable feminist agenda, also somehow America needs to
| become great again because being top world economy is not good
| enough. Also soyjack memes.
| mempko wrote:
| Did the people pay for the majority of the tariffs, like 80%
| percent? But the companies are getting this money? How is this
| now just a transfer of what I paid to these companies? They just
| get free money at my expense?
| solid_fuel wrote:
| Putting aside the discussions of who will actually see any money
| returned, I will note that this haul covers about 100 days of war
| with Iran. ($1 Billion per day is the initial assessment from the
| Pentagon.) [0]
|
| For anyone who was still under the illusion that the tariffs
| would make any impact on the government debt, hopefully this
| illustrates that both the tariffs and the ridiculous DOGE effort
| were never really about the budget.
|
| [0] https://iran-cost-ticker.com/
| khat wrote:
| US imposes tariffs, companies increase cost to offset price,
| consumers front the bill. Companies sue government, judge orders
| refunds, companies pocket money and keep prices at current rate.
| The people get screwed over twice.
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