The "Importer of Record" gets the refund. I read that a large fraction of those importer of record are Chinese companies.

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adriand 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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Jeremy1026 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, but when the product costs went up to cover their fees who paid that? We did. So the "Importer of Record" will (maybe) get a refund from the government, while also getting the higher prices paid to them from the distributors/consumers.

	▲	vuln a day ago \| parent [-]
		yes scotus hates poors and is complete bought out by the rich

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superxpro12 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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...

	▲	loeg 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.)
	▲	intrasight a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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."