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.