Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
wsj.com1021 points by JumpCrisscross a day ago
1021 points by JumpCrisscross a day ago
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“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.”
In DHL the link to get tax documents is already broken for a year or so, so I cannot get VAT back on DHL shipments.
With FedEx I can but it's a manual process of screenshotting a bank transaction and emailing a specific email address with a shipping number.
When tariffs started all the servers of the shipping companies went down.
So I highly doubt they will just do some computer magic.
From experience I assume they will "accidentally" run into all kinds of technical difficulties making it a 274 step process to get the money back.
For scale: Shopify, a software company by heart, with 170bn market cap and 3500 engineers employed, does not have native VAT support, required in the Europe which accounts for 15-20% of their revenue. All they would have to do to support this is add a checkout field "VAT number" that shows up on a pdf invoice.
So to assume a shipping company will just work some computer magic is really far fetched. The FedEx page only lets you login after you refresh the page exactly once already for more than a year.
> does not have native VAT support
If citizens do not have access to high quality tools that allow them to exercise their rights that rights are "de facto" invalidated.
If corporations are allowed to implement regulations in faulty ways the economic system stops working and fraud is easier than ever.
Part of the problem is governments trying to look "pro businesses" have become just "anti regulation". Organized crime is rising in Europe as it is increasingly easy to move money around in uncontrolled ways thru big platforms. But asking big platforms to adhere to standards and If citizens do not have access to high quality tools that allow them to exercise their rights that rights are "de facto" invalidated.
Part of the problem is governments trying to look "pro businesses" have become just "pro fraud". Organized crime is rising in Europe as it is increasingly easy to move money around in uncontrolled ways thru big platforms. But asking big platforms to adhere to standards and regulations is something that corruption does not allow for.
> Organized crime is rising in Europe as it is increasingly easy to move money around in uncontrolled ways thru big platforms.
Even though it's a sensible claim, and since you're implying causal relationship, can you provide a source for this? I'm not European so I wouldn't know.
> All they would have to do to support this is add a checkout field "VAT number" that shows up on a pdf invoice.
If only it would be that simple :)
In EU you have different procedures for B2C and B2B transactions. For B2B you need to verify the VAT number in VIES system and it’s not responsive like 50% of the time. I swear Germans literally turn off their servers when they go to sleep. If a customer provides a VAT number the flow might take even 12h+ to verify it. If you can do that verification you can use 0% VAT rate but if not you need to use a different VAT rate.
For B2C you need to support several scenarios: if company is outside of EU it needs to register for IOSS, if it’s a EU company that sells to other EU countries it needs to register for OSS or in each EU country for VAT separately but also a mix of both is possible. You can decide to no register to OSS special procedure but then there’s a sales limit before you have to register and you need to track it. Otherwise, you need to maintain special OSS registry with sales records and three pieces of proof that customer is based in the member country. Some EU countries have XML invoices (Italy, Romania, Germany soon) or mandatory invoice APIs (Poland), of course there’s actually no common EU standard so it depends on where the company is based.
Finally you need to choose a VAT rate for that country and they also change occasionally, e.g. Slovakia, Romania and Estonia all changed their highest rate just last year.
This is the bare minimum you need to support. There’s a lot of edge cases, e.g. it matters what country you actually ship from, and if you use e.g. fulfillment there are special procedures for that as well, or if you resell in B2B there are chain transactions which have their own set of spaghetti rules.
Much of that is at least for my company handled by our accounting company. We just print the correct VAT on the invoice, and report the same VAT to the accountant and they take care of the rest. The shop/payment processor etc doesn't need to be integrated to any of it. Though I have to post-process Stripe's reports, as they refuse to include the used VAT rate in there, despite them knowing it. Stripe does try to sell the tax service to us, but I refuse.
You can simplify for your use case (only B2C or you refund VAT afterwards for B2B, you only ship from one location, custom invoicing), but that’s what it takes to implement it correctly on platform level.
DHL is massive scam company.
I ordered a tent from overseas and they classified it as both a food product and an aluminum product and charged me 600 bucks in tariffs.
I'm fighting to get it back but they keep ignoring me with polite "were really busy" replys.
This is just the citizenry paying double tariffs. First, we bought the higher priced goods. Now, the companies are trying to take our tariff payments again, this time from the government, to "make up" for the tariff money that we had already paid them in the first place.
What should happen is that $X of the budget should be put into escrow for the next administration to use after these criminals make their way out.
Maybe triple. (1) paid higher prices, (2) the government will issue debt to refund the tariffs to importers who we already reimbursed through higher prices, and then (3) Congress will use the extra debt from the refunds as justification for higher individual taxes to pay for the 2025 tax cuts for businesses.
And the supreme court is to blame for all of this because they decided to invalidate lower court injunctions, reasoning that there was no chance for "irreparable harm"... Yeah, right.
No. The people are to blame.
Both the people who voted for the criminal to be president. And the people who supported such a horrible Democratic candidate that she couldn't even win against Trump.
1. Nobody supported Kamala as the democratic nominee.
2. The US senate is horribly malapportioned and gates scotus nominations.
So everyone are to blame except the exceedingly small number of people who supported third party candidates that had no chance?
Depends which people. The question is why people voted for Trump en masse.
People who voted for Trump were pretty clear about what their issues were. They wanted to bully trans and they wanted to stick it to the libs. They were looking forward to liberals suffering. Some of them would never vote for a woman or black person. They liked masculinity Trump projects - aggressive insulting fraudster.
There is no mystery about that.
And as always, all acts of republicans and conservatives are fault of the democrats.
The only people who are innocent are the people who have huge power in their hands and literally made decisions that caused this.
If you really want to get to the root cause, on the Democratic side it’s the people who promoted/supported/covered up for Biden when it would have been obvious to anyone close that he wasn’t fit for the purpose any more. And Biden himself, for his hubris.
That was why things were rushed and there wasn’t a proper primary. Yes, they could have held a very late/quick convention and would likely not have picked Kamala, but anyone getting the nomination at that late stage would still have been hugely in the back foot.
There is no single root cause in a complex system of checks and balances. Many parts need to fail for things to get as bad as they are now. Trying to reduce everything to a single fault is either stupid populism or blatant propaganda.
I love how the root cause is always the opposition, never the perpetrator.
Focusing on the Democrats (who are hot garbage) is such a wonderful way to keep attention focused anywhere but on the almost half the country still supporting a murderous cabal filled with people covering for a bunch of (other??) people who raped children to get pleasure from the sexual torture (yes, it's pretty clear from the Epstein files that they did everything they could to destroy those young children's minds and hearts for sport, and that was the real 'game' they were playing).
But by all means, carry on about bad tactics in the election, surely that is the 'root cause' here.
I don't disagree with you, but I also wonder what exactly the Biden justice department was doing with these files for four years. It seems to me like they were covering for the same people. Being "in the club" is more important to them than party.
This is the real lesson to take away from all of this.
Voting doesn't matter the only thing in history that has ever changed corrupt politicians is violence.
It’s the electoral college. It needs to be abolished.
Restricted representative size, gerrymandering, FPTP voting, businesses with resident/citizen rights, the restriction of 42 U.S.C. 1983 to not cover Federal actors...
Tons of goods companies paid tariffs for were inputs for those industries.
Instead of being mad at companies that were forced to pay illegal tariffs, who now want to recoup some of that, be mad at the cause of illegal tariffs. Letting the govt keep the money by fighting over who is a victim, hold the govt feet to the fire so they learn not to do this to begin with.
Some companies ate the cost of the tariffs. The whole thing is a mess.
Too bad the next guys will also be completely owned by capital.
Yes
The system is capital.
Unavoidable
Seems like China avoids it.
Ehh, they do a little better, but they are very much run by capital now. Most of their politicians are capitalist investors. And while individuals may get smacked down on occasion, as a whole they still follow the desires of capital holders above all else.
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.
> 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.
I'd pretty much grown up believing that that's how the US worked post-slavery (aside from occasional deviances from the rule). Since the start of the pandemic, I've had quite the awakening.
> 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-arvonlisävero, 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).
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 ...
That may have been the case for some time, but the current government in Finland is... well, perhaps I personally wouldn't describe them as fairly competent.
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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).
Ah, yes, the whole world is against me. Do you have anything meaningful to say?
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.
DOGE was about funding Golden Dome back when Elon thought he was getting the contract
DOGE was about breaking things as much as you can. Especially those that were working and not under Trumps control.
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.
You want to put politicians I. Jail when the courts find their action violated laws?
Thats pretty much every President in the last century.
They all lose court cases.
They probably should have been. But the presidential system putting de-facto unchecked power into the president is just asking for such abuses to happen. Almost by design one might think.
It's not unchecked power. The very fact the courts overturned it proof the power is checked.
Trump is the only one convicted of felonies and found liable for civil wrongdoing.
No other president violated laws (and please don’t start with Monica Lewinsky or that time Obama wore a tan suit…)
People? Trump is the only actor here who deserves punishment for these illegal tariffs, but there is no grounds to jail a sitting president.
Ultimately yes. But every one of his enablers is complicit and should be tried if we are ever able to extricate ourselves from this mess.
If the lesson by now isn’t “be careful wishing for powers you don’t want the other side to use against you” then I don’t know what will drive that home…
The law applying to powerful high level people is a good thing. The state where law binds only weak people and can be safely broken by rich and powerful is the bad one.
As of now, the law applies to me. I am on that "other side". It officially does not apply to Trump at all. And billionaires and administration can safely ignore it, although there is at least pretension of the law technically maybe applying to them.
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Why not? I have no idea why people were thinking corporations are overpowered when twitter banned trump. I thought it was great and showed nobody is above the law/tos. Likewise if the president has done crimes, he should pay the time.
Unfortunately, it has been ruled that the president is immune to legal prosecution on this matter, regardless of whether it is legal or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
> the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview
It turns out that "checks and balances" meant "the president is unchecked and unbalanced".
Predidency is an Institution which needs to be protected at all costs. The checks and balances wasn’t meant to setup a system where Presidents can be sent to prison but to prevent “crimes” (for the lack of a better word) to happen to begin with. Of course our current “party over Country” system has practically killed any semblance of checks and balances…
> Predidency is an Institution which needs to be protected at all costs.
That sounds a lot like a king.
Last I checked, our founders were pretty against the whole king thing.
I would be shocked if a single one of them said that a President should be immune to prosecution for crimes they commit.
> I would be shocked if a single one of them said that a President should be immune to prosecution for crimes they commit.
They said or they haven’t said it, no? If they did we’d have paper trail.
Federalist Papers. Go read them. Anti-Federalist Papers too. At the end of the day, we're still trying to hash out the same old song.
Does Trump want to be Mussolinied? It should always be legal to jail and hang the head of state, otherwise the head of state risks going by a much funnier way. Its not about politics, it's simple game theory.
I ordered something from a Chinese company and they quoted me 5USD per unit and 35USD shipping. I accepted and the units were shipped and delivered and of excellent quality.
Sometime later FedEx sends me a weird bill for some random seeming amount of money I owed. They had a link or email or something to basically refuse to pay. I did refuse to pay. The shipper ended up communicating with me to determine I was going to refuse to pay and I found where Fedex had on the website that indicated the shipper was responsible for all fees. I assume the randomness of it was related to tariffs but I wasn't going to pay anything like what they sent me.
I do hope that some repercussions come of these terrible economic policies and the shipper gets their money back from Fedex, but as a company or as an individual I don't think a company's policy to send random bills after delivery is valid either.
I've had this before, a few years ago, and a quick google at the time seemed to show that a fair few other people have. I'm in the UK, and about 6 months after buying something small from China (iirc), we got an £10 invoice for a "disbursement fee" from Fedex. It was very vague as to what the fee was actually for. I assume it was just a "scam" by Fedex to get more money.
This sounds familiar. Months after not receiving an order, UPS sent a letter from a pseudo(?) collection agency for a charge added to the order. But there was no way to pay for it - as there was a statement that only the shipper could pay, but still, the order didn't arrive - it was very confusing, the shipment disappeared in paperwork - and no one could figure it out. Customer was out the original purchase fee, producer never could reviver shipment. Complete mess.
Do I understand correctly, that these companies applying for refunds, likely passed the costs onto consumers who paid a higher price for goods. Now the companies will claw back their refunds from the gov AND keep the markup they charged consumers?
I keep hearing this logic, but is not like the companies asked for it.
The politicians did this. They could pass a law tomorrow forcing the companies to refund windfalls from the illegally levied taxes.
What is it like purchasing consumer goods from the EU under the new 10% section 122 rates? Previously I could have expected 25% tariffs + UPS/govt fees equivalent to another 40%. But hearing the horrors of shippers (UPS, FedEx, DHL) charging import fees equivalent to 1000% with no recourse to refuse the shipment and recoup costs, I never pulled the trigger. Has anything changed with the section 122 rates, especially considering the $800 de minimus exception won't be reinstated?
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….
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...
This is a tactic I'm seeing more in politics. When it's in the interests of a group for something to pass, but they don't want the blame, they can abstain or defer. It still goes through and if it goes wrong they can argue it's not their fault. Win/win for them.
> 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.
Hungary is a parliamentary republic, Orban is the Prime Minister. Turkey was parliamentary system until was changed in 2017 to presidential system with more power for Erdogan.
I agree about parliamentary systems being better, but they are still vulnerable. It doesn't matter if the electorate is in favor of strongman.
Parliamentary systems have a very hard time strategizing in especially larger countries.
> where a single person "rules" without needing to face opposition in a parliament nor even requiring support from its own party
But that doesn't describe the US right now. The problem is that the GOP is providing at least enough support to enable the behavior that we currently see. If congress as a whole wanted to stop things they could.
I actually quite like the US system but the combination of first past the post voting and party politics appear increasingly likely to strangle us.
The founders never imagined a coequal branch of government voluntarily giving up its power.
Actually, they were aware of the threat.
Several framers of the constitution expressed deep concerns about the potential for coordinated non-governmental "factions" taking over government via elections.
Unfortunately, despite going to great efforts to limit power centralization internally, concerns of external centralization were not heeded and there are no limits on the coordination of the US government via non-governmental organizations such as parties.
This might have been a prophesy:
> Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.
> It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
> [Omitted here, but at this point he worries that even a foreign country could weaponize a party to take control of the country, via elections.]
> There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true, and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with layout, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.
-- George Washington [0]
States used to operate independently enough that the same party in different counties and states might have varied views. But today, both parties have become highly centralized and homogenous from local to federal levels. Now intensely centralized themselves, they are well prepared to each compete to centralize government as an extension of a single party.
And given it has become relatively easy to do so, the incentives are now there for parties to treat elections as war, and party control of government as the highest priority policy at all times. Incentives don't mean it has to happen, but ... well we know how that goes.
The winner take all elements, where a party that gains a power edge over the other is in a better position to entrench themselves further, if not permanently, are also in play.
When competition for power devolves into a dichotomy of complete wins or losses, the most powerful decision makers spend their time continually competing, with little attention left for concerns about competent governance or the public's well being.
The current state of the unchecked US party system is the number one problem for the country. As all other problems migrate downstream from it.
The biggest problem isn't "which" party gains control. The problem is that any party could ever obtain majority control in all three branches.
France has arguably the most presidential regime of the OECD, while it's not without faults it's not horrible either. Parliamentary regimes optimize for coalition stability which weakens them and forces to always take the path of least resistance, which isn't usually the best one.
I don't know about that, somehow Macron is still around. Who knows what he will come up with to extend his time while having zero support.
The US is special. It's a true federative nation, with a fairly weak federal government and strong individual states. So the president actually does not have a lot of power inside the country. He can't just fire the governor of Minnesota or unilaterally cut funds to a state that he doesn't like.
But the foreign policy is where the president's authority is outsized. So that's why Trump is so focused on it, it's one of the few areas that he can directly control.
> probably
Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.
The "Importer of Record" gets the refund. I read that a large fraction of those importer of record are Chinese companies.
According to Ryan Peterson, the CEO of Flexport, there was a large increase in the number of foreign companies registered as the "importer of record" in the US as a result of the tariffs. On the Odd Lots podcast, he stated this was due to fraud: companies set up subsidiary corps in the US, which then imported goods from their parent/sibling/related companies at much lower prices than market value. Because tariffs are a percentage of the value, this made them lower. Then the subsidiary could turn around and sell it in the US at market rates.
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.
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...
We have Chinese businesses that are domestic importers.
(To some extent, this was to facilitate tariff fraud. As an American business buying abroad, your foreign supplier would take over responsibility for importing into the US, and then you could pretend you were unaware it was fraudulently undervaluing its imports to lower effective tariffs paid. Any possible consequences for the foreign entity getting caught doing fraud are minimal.)
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."
I think it's practically impossible, and like you said, even worse prices are not going back down. Companies tested elasticity and most of them will increase revenue since the pricing is generalized, all competitors did it at once.
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?
If you wanted to pass the refund on wouldn't the most sensible way be to pass it on to the two supermarkets since they were the actual buyers from you?
If the supermarket that raised prices wants to pass that on to their 1000 buyers that would be for them to deal with, not you.
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.
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.
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...
Look at the CPI chart and draw a trend line ignoring recent years. You'll see we're living under 2034 price levels currently.
Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.
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???
All this fuckery makes it hard to keep track of financial inflows and outflows, which in turn makes it easy to commit graft and corruption. Especially coupled with the forced retirement of those principled people formerly in bureaucratic positions, and the lack of consequences for lying and scheming on behalf of the kleptocracy.
Judge actions by their outcomes, not by their stated purpose.
POSIWID, the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. A quick way to cut through bullshit and "But I meant for X to do Y"
Source?
Joint Economic Committee a good enough source? https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2...
Or Tax Foundation? https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs...
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.
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...
SCOTUS was told no injunction was warranted because IF the tariffs were found to be improper, the money could be returned-no harm.
Now the government says they can’t refund because the amount of money is too big and they already spent it.
The latest temporary tariffs are also likely illegal.
Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be an express lane for litigation similar actions like this.
There is an express lane, it's reserved for the government appealing cases, in which any and all injunctions are halted because the court has unilaterally decided to interpret "not being able to do illegal shit" as "great harm" while there is no harm in sending people to torture prisons abroad on the flimsiest of evidence.
They sure took their time with this one.
we can’t even do that with violent criminal let alone white color criminals. lol
This is a silly point. Courts aren't sitting around umming and ahhing about whether they should issue an arrest warrant to get x violent criminal off the streets, the system wastes minimal time in apprehending them and putting them in jail. At THAT point things slow to a crawl - because there's no longer the urgent incentive to act to prevent further harm.
Whereas in these cases the government is potentially harming the entire public every single day that the courts don't act.
I thought those were on very solid ground commonly used by past administrations?
Section 122 has rarely been used. State AGs announced lawsuits today: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/trump-tariffs-state-ags-sue-...
Section 122 is only supposed to be applied to address balance of payments deficits, which are essentially zero with floating currency exchange rates (since the 70s). They're also limited to 15% and 150 days. (Judges will not look favorably on Trump trying to just restart the same tariff for another 150 days after the first expire.)
> I thought those were on very solid ground commonly used by past administrations
No, Section 122 tariffs have never been used prior to Trump turning to them after the Supreme Court decision striking down the IEEPA tariffs, and, the states suing the Administration argue, the explicit sole statutory purpose for which they were allowed in the 1974 law creating the power can only possible to exist under a fixed-exchange-rate monetary system, which the US has not had since 1976.
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....
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.
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.
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?
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.
Prices don’t monotonically go up forever, prices come down all the time
Edit: Sorry autocorrect thought I said moronically,
Did you mean "moronically" or "monotonically"? I'd accept either, just wondering which one you meant.
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.
"Prices take the elevator up and the stairs down" - yes, over time the market pushes no-longer-justified prices back down, but this is much slower than the price increase happens.
You won't get the money back that you overpaid in the meantime.
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.
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.
> 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.
I don‘t know where this observation comes from, but here in Austria a majority of people in lower income sectors than IT do all of this?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
There's going to have to be class actions filed against the retailers if consumers want anything.
There would be zero legal basis for that. It wouldn't win.
I'm not defending that. Just explaining.
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.
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?
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.’
> Tomé’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...
> 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...
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.
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.
https://www.greaterthangames.com/blogs/news/greater-than-gam...
Effectively closed
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"?
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.
Now,
was it a tariff you paid,
or a carrier fee related to the tariff?
Delivery companies act as tariff agents and collect tariffs for Customs and Border Protection, so, yes, if you were the importer of record on a delivery, it is quite likely that you paid the tariff via the delivery company.
These are likely to be refunded, because even if you were the purchaser of the product, you were the importer of record and paid the tariff, not a downstream buyer who paid an increased price because of the tariffs.
Similarly, the importers voluntarily paid the tariffs. They could choose to go out of business, go to jail, be sued into bankruptcy, or pay. Totally at their discretion.
Congress can act to pay back the economically harmed party, the consumer. They won't because we live in an oligarchy.
You'll need to ask companies that are going to get that government refund.
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
Depends on how the items are purchased. Some are trying... https://www.facebook.com/CardsAgainstHumanity -> https://www.getyourfuckingmoneyback.com
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.
20% off the tariff-inflated price, so customers only pay the original price (until the tariff refund is used up, then it's back to the inflated price again).
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.
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.
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.
They will do this right before raising the prices on all goods to 30% before the sale deal.
SCOTUS is entirely to blame for the chaos here, the courts quickly found the tariffs illegal but they used the shadow docket to stay the ruling causing the illegal behavior to continue for a year.
There are three co-equal branches of government. SCOTUS is to blame for the chaos, but so is Congress. The Republican members of Congress could have joined the Democrats at any point to reassert Congressional power over tariffs and taxation. They chose not to.
They also chose to appoint the conservative majority on the Supreme Court which made these choices.
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.
Of course not, you're right. I think the parent comment implies the responsibility of the Trump administration, the same way criticizing a botched police response implies blaming a mass shooter for a crime.
A sensible administration would not have used emergency powers to implement worldwide tariffs because they don't like how the world economy is shaping.
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...
Thanks, very interesting article! Also these two linked from that one:
National emergencies: Chadha wasn't the problem
https://prototypingpolitics.substack.com/p/national-emergenc...
Elizabeth Goiten (Brennan Center) testimony to a senate committee on May 22, 2024 (a nice summary of the general issue of executive use of emergencies)
[PDF] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Go...
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.
The Supreme Court already invalidated the tariffs. That’s the context of this order (and the subtitle of the article).
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.
> 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
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.
Thanks! I guess I wasn't understanding what jerf meant, and I hadn't read enough to be correcting people.
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.
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).
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...
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.
Yeah, I got the receipts even—with tariffs itemized.
I'll never see that money.
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.
The government raised taxes, consumers paid the costs, and companies will take the spoils. I don’t think this is what people voting MAGA intended, but will they realize that they got screwed?
Most likely they will put the blame on the 'disloyal' supreme court and not on Trump.
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...
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.
There are more conflicts happening right now than in World War 2. Meaning, World War 3 is already here. I don't know why everyone is pretending it's not happening, the people doing it are calling themselves the Department of War.
For friends there, be strong. It seems it has not being an easy period. But also remember, no one wants a conflict. Good luck there!
I'd curious specifically about FedEx (and other parcel shippers like UPS if they filed suit as well.) They operated as a broker--they collected many of those fees from individuals who bought something overseas and when it was shipped in, FedEx paid the tariff then then billed the receiver. If FedEx wins a refund will I get paid back for the fee I paid them? I don't expect I'll see the "brokerage fee" because the labor was expended whether the tariff was legal or not and is not part of the refund they'd get, but I'd appreciate if I see the $79 I paid them to cover the tariffs for some Arca Swiss camera parts. I honestly haven't heard anything specific on that matter.
Most of them have promised to issue refunds to customers if and when they get refunded the money.
FedEx:
> Our intent is straightforward: if refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges. When that will happen and the exact process for requesting and issuing refunds will depend in part on future guidance from the government and the court.
https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/international/us-tariff...
Thanks for that reference. I can only hope. Unfortunately, I just paid a UPS bill for the new tariffs.
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?
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?
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.
Excuse me, this is the Inited States we’re talking about.
You’re getting mighty close to socialism there citizen.
Most everything was probably bought with credit/debit cards. The individual records exist. Just using your Amazon etc order history should be dead simple
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.
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.
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.
So corporations get refunds, I'm sure they'll issue refunds to consumers any day now.
It's difficult because some companies ate all the tariffs, some passed the costs to consumers, and some split the costs between suppliers, themselves, and consumers.
I think they should split it by giving a portion to companies and the rest to consumers.
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.
"use that money to rehire and repay workers"
or give it to shareholders.
They only do that after tax, so there'll be more tax paid if they do that.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
This is what sophisticated corporate welfare and wealth transfer looks like I guess.
Use tariffs to tax the hundreds of millions of Americans, then give out tax breaks to the elites.
Just crazy transfer of wealth in broad daylight.
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.
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.
If we're optimistic and those refunds actually go out it's going to be us, the taxpayers, paying for them...again.
Like the saying goes, they get you coming and going.
I ache for the day we were governed by people who were competent and wanted to govern.
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?
Sounds like communism to me.
Socialism, you mean, not communism.
This is a way of spending taxes on the public, the kind Denmark does. It isn't "no private property; everything belongs to the govt".
Also, if we are redistributing taxes to fund endless wars and subsidizing almond/avocado farmers, and propping up public money to ensure banks don't collapse, we are already in socialist territory. Have always been. But God forbid we spend the money on healthcare ... that's "taking us back to Mao".
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.”
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.
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?
Do consumers get a refund too re: inflated prices for the items they bought?
They will never pay this without a fight.
Good time to specialize in "tariff litigation", if you're a law firm.
Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...
> 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.
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.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
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.
> 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.
So effectively US citizens have been paying an extra tax, which money flowed to certain companies. I can't wait to hear the justifications that will follow from the Trump government.
At least our president made a lot of lawyers happier.
The past 20 years have been an endless series of wealth transfers from commoners to the wealthy. This is Oligarchy.
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.
Judge orders the government. The government does not obey. Now what?
Country breaks down further since rule of law does not matter anymore.
Protests are next, mid term elections will be furious.
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?
Ha, ha, ha. Someone, somewhere, ordering government to do something. Thank you for the best laugh today.
So we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?
Good. Perhaps the administration should follow the law.
If consumers indirectly pay the cost of tariffs, who pays for the dead-weight loss of taxes on domestic employers?
... refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs were passed to. Essentially turning it retroactively into a tax to private businesses. This is the worst case of all scenarios for the consumer.
I understand the frustration but I don't understand the logic. The businesses who paid the tariffs (who were literally sent an invoice that they paid) should be the ones refunded.
How would the government even be able to determine if a business increased product prices due to tariffs vs other factors, or even if the business increased prices at all? What if the product is a loss leader and the company was fine just 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?
> 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?
You just refund the people who pay the tariffs. You can't do any more than that.
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.
Agreed; only the edge importer can be refunded by the government. Hopefully those businesses pass on the refund, but that's up to them.
> 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
Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost, it seems pretty impractical to determine who is due a refund - end users or businesses. Or the logistics of refunds to customers.
One possibility would be for businesses to return the fraction of the tariff paid by customers to future customers by offering the items affected with a negative tax until the refund is used up.
"Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost…"
Ha ha, that's a good one. I have yet to hear about reduced profits anywhere. Instead, as I said in another comment, I have actual physical receipts with the additional tariff cost (itemized!) in a pile on my workshop (which I'll never see refunded).
If the amounts are under the limit you might sue the company who cut those invoices in small claims court for the amounts of the tariff line items on the invoices.
The invoices give you slam dunk evidence that you paid that amount in tariffs, and the supreme court decision says the payment was illegally collected, so seems like an easy win for you.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.”
That's not how capitalism works. Consumers ate the cost. Have you not bought anything in the last year?
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.
That's what I just said
I know you're being cute, but businesses generally don't pass all the costs of increased COGS on to customers.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
I didn't have to deal with it, but from other comments, most of the international shippers also charged a hefty fee to broker the tarrifs. Expect not to get that refunded.
that was the plan all along
These people are evil, but also bumbling idiots, so sometimes there is no evil plan, just incompetence.
There are direct ties from the administration to companies offering hedges against tariffs. There was absolutely an evil plan, IMO.
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
Trump should be personally liable for this. He knew it was illegal but he still did it, to the harm of US citizens.
“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
Good luck with that.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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".
>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?
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...
> 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.
> 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...
Not saying you're wrong, but note that in general attorney-client privilege is kind of important as well.
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.
So a Whitehouse insider is going to get a bunch of tarrif refund money?
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.
>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?
> 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.
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.
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.
> but I don't see how we could know there is no such memo.
There was no such memo because OLC isn’t full of dummies. Maybe the talking heads on CNN said the case against the tariffs was a slam dunk, but you don’t get split courts at multiple levels for cases that are slam dunks.
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.
White House legal opinions aren't any better than other legal opinions. Opinions are not "information".
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.
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.
Yes it absolutely is valuable to have access to expert opinions and people do pay money to acquire opinions from experts.
But expert advice, even if material, is not the same as insider information.
Well, I think context matters here a lot:
If you go to a random lawyer in Wyoming and ask them to write "expert opinion" then what you'll get would probably be something standard, written by a junior associate, or maybe even produced by ChatGPT.
If the White House orders "expert opinion" on potential Supreme Court ruling then the chances are that the expert asked to prepare it is someone who plays golf with some of the SCOTUS judges.
So those two "expert opinions" might not bear the same weight.
The quality of an opinion has no bearing as to whether that opinion is insider information.
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.)
Prediction markets already had it as more likely than not that the court would rule against the tariffs
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
You are just out of your depth in this area. You don't understand what Cantor has done here, you don't understand what Howard can or cannot do in his role.
Howard Lutnick's positions have been directly opposite of what Cantor has bet will happen. Cantor has 10 or 12 thousand employees and is constantly doing all manner of things. Howard has no power over the supreme court. His son is the chairman, he's miles away from being in the weeds on what specific things they do. He isn't going to be comped like crazy as the chairman.
There is no conflict. There is only the appearance of one and it only appears that way to people who don't understand the situation.
> 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?
It's an investment bank. They have a million things going on, sometimes counter to each other.
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!
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).
> 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.
>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.
> 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.
is it not a conflict of interest if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?
>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?
They literally spent a decent chunk of money spinning up a line of business that could only make money if the tariffs were illegal.
> 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.
[flagged]
Insurance company deal: if you pay us $X now, and then Y happens, we will make you whole, even though that cost may very well exceed $X.
Lutnick deal: we pay you $X' now, and if Y' happens, we collect everything which will substantively exceed $X'.
This is not insurance, its closer to shorting stocks.
Oh, one other thing: the insurance company has essentially nothing to do with Y at all, in the sense that they have no control over Y and generally speaking no involvement in it (think: accidents, floods, storms, fires). By contrast Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce of the United States of America.
Lutnick deal: if we pay you $X now, and then Y happens, you will make us the whole refund, even though that windfall may very well exceed $X.
Insurance company deal: you pay us $X' now, and if Y' happens, we pay for everything which may substantively exceed $X'.
I have no idea what the point of this is, since it just restates what I wrote, and reinforces the point that the Lutnick deal is nothing like "insurance".
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.
No, it's not a conflict of interest. It's perhaps dumb, or morally bad, or several other things.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”