> No, they have a record of who handed the money over to the government. This does not tell you who paid the duties.

The entity that handed over the money to the government is the entity that paid the duties, and is the one the government must refund.

If an entity has passed those costs on does not change that, and does not turn the 130B into a slush fund.

However I agree that consumers will be likely be royally screwed by this debacle, that much was obvious from the start.

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coldpie a day ago | parent [-]

If the government charges the importer $20 and the importer charges me $20, then I am in effect the one who paid the duty. If the refund goes to the importer, and it does not come back to me, then the government and the importer have colluded to rob me of $20. This isn't an accident, the owners of the import companies who will benefit from this theft were almost certainly all Trump supporters.

In reality, half of the funds will go to that. Maybe even some tiny portion of it will genuinely make its way back to the people who actually paid the duties. This is the fig leaf to which I referred. The other half will go to Trump toadies in the form of "mistakes," fraud, corruption, skimming, unclaimed funds, etc. This is the slush fund to which I referred.

In the end, all of it is going to Trump toadies. It's a $130B transfer of wealth to Trump's financial backers.

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phil21 a day ago | parent | next [-]

That’s not how commerce works.

You agreed with your supplier on a price. You paid it.

Doesn’t matter that part of the price was tariffs or component costs or labor. Doesn’t matter if your supplier gets a tax rebate or a kickback from an upstream supplier after the fact. These things are entirely immaterial to the meeting of the minds when you execute the contract for sale.

The only moderately fuzzy case is going to be if there is an outright line item for “tariff charge” - I always thought companies were being a bit reckless explicitly adding these as line items due to this exact uncertainty. Very few companies are going to have a perfect 1:1 ratio here so there is some definite business risk in doing so.

And no, not even close to all companies that were charged tariffs are “trump toadies” - that’s an absurd claim on its face. The ones I know hurt the most and nearly put out of business due to needing to raise prices certainly were not. And there is zero way they could afford refunding at a 1:1 ratio now.

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coldpie a day ago | parent [-]

> Doesn’t matter if your supplier gets a tax rebate or a kickback from an upstream supplier after the fact.

It does matter if the tax that was gathered was illegal, as it is here. The illegally gathered funds should go back to the entity that paid the tax, not the middleman who ferried it from here to there. The unclear method for how to accomplish this is where the grift will be coming in.

> not even close to all companies that were charged tariffs are “trump toadies”

I did not claim this. I claimed most of the money that will be refunded will go to Trump toadies.

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phil21 a day ago | parent [-]

> I did not claim this. I claimed most of the money that will be refunded will go to Trump toadies.

That would require most of the money collected being from trump toadies to begin with. Anyone that regularly imports goods as a matter of business will also be requesting their refunds. Only a tiny fraction sold their rights.

> It does matter if the tax that was gathered was illegal, as it is here. The illegally gathered funds should go back to the entity that paid the tax.

The entity that paid the tax was the one that wrote the check to the federal government. They chose to (or not) pass all or a portion of those costs down to their customer. The customer in the end chose to purchase the goods or not.

If your landlord charges you $100/mo more in rent due to a property tax that was later reassessed due to a mistake, they are under no legal obligation to refund you that money. You chose to rent at the higher price.

Simply put: Your recourse was at the time of transaction. After that it’s no longer your money. Plenty of companies get refunded errant taxes paid years later due to law being misapplied or even found outright illegal. This is no different.

The only marginally interesting legal question here is going to be the companies that separated it out as a line item. I imagine this will be roughly as enforceable as “fuel surcharges” are on airline tickets - where the surcharge has nothing to do with the actual real time cost of Jet fuel. It will likely devolve all the way down to specific clauses in contracts, most of which will not cover this to start with. So it may as well be a “I’m wearing black socks today” tax as a line item would be my guess. Very interested in the first few test cases though!

	▲	coldpie a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Your recourse was at the time of transaction These illegal taxes weren't only on optional goods. I couldn't opt out of buying everything for a full year. I disagree that it's OK for the government to force everyone in the country to give a $130B gift to business owners via an illegal action, the vast majority of which will be going straight to the wealthiest companies & people, and/or Trump's personal supporters. It's just straight-up theft.

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Detrytus a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe I'm naive, but if court orders tariff refunds cannot it also order that the importer must return it to individual buyers? That's only fair, right? Companies don't get to keep the money. If they want to sue government for some extra compensation for their trouble they can do that separately.