Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs | Hacker News Reader

Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs

wsj.com

1,062 pointsJumpCrisscross790 comments

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https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-...

“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.

> 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.

> 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.

It's too bad DOGE killed 18F. Doing this kind of thing, and doing it well was their whole reason for being.

People are really good at using computers when it comes to taking your money. Really bad at using computers when it comes to giving you money. You can’t explain that.

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.

A product can be both, according to the current US administration. DHL is not necessarily at fault here.

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.

That’s the American way

Some companies ate the cost of the tariffs. The whole thing is a mess.

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.

You really think Trump is capable of learning such a lesson? This isn't a 'they' situation, it's a 'him' situation. The cronies enabling him may well be cap[able of learning such a lesson, but their noses are too deep in the trough of self interest to care.

Too bad the next guys will also be completely owned by capital.

Yes

The system is capital.

Unavoidable

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.

> 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).

> 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.

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.

Putting aside the discussions of who will actually see any money returned, I will note that this haul covers about 100 days of war with Iran. ($1 Billion per day is the initial assessment from the Pentagon.) [0]

For anyone who was still under the illusion that the tariffs would make any impact on the government debt, hopefully this illustrates that both the tariffs and the ridiculous DOGE effort were never really about the budget.

[0] https://iran-cost-ticker.com/

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.

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.

By "people go to jail" you mean Trump, right? Right?

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.

> ... but is not like the companies asked for it.

This doesn't justify them double dipping. Raising prices on consumers to cover tarrif costs and then getting refunded for tarrif costs isn't ethical no matter who caused the tariffs.

Consumers didn't ask for this either, so are we going to see year-long sales from companies?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

It is almost as if this was a planned wealth transfer that was immensely succesful.

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

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?

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.

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.

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....

> Congress needs to step up and take its power back from the executive.

Won't happen with this administration at least; the expectation being that unless you are a yes-man, you'll be denounced as "not loyal" and voted out.

Just wait until the next Democratic president is elected. The current crop of Republicans will suddenly remember that Congress can exercise this power.

Still waiting on getting those freedoms back that we temporarily gave up after 9/11 via the patriot act so we could get the baddies.

Don't hold your breath for either to be given back.

There is no probably; we not getting our money back. In fact, any of the money that has been spent in the meantime (say to make up for wealthy tax cuts or to expand military or border funding) we get to pay again!

Spoiler alert: they spent it all.

According to the federal report yesterday:

> CBO estimates spending totaled $621 billion, or $18 billion more than February 2025. Revenue totaled $314 billion, which is up $17 billion from the same time last year due to an increase in collections of customs duties from tariff policies and increased income and payroll tax receipts.

There is no excuse for how long it took the Supreme court to decide this very obvious case.

they waited until the robes slowed down.

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.

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.

I thought those were on very solid ground commonly used by past administrations?

Well if it works, they’re gonna keep doing it.

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.

I suspect that money is involved. We’re becoming numb to it.

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.

I like Class Action lawsuits for $100 please

I hate the tariffs, but giving the money back to the corporations would be absolutely _grotesque_.

Every company that collected a tariff fee needs to refund it as they collect their own refunds.

scouts got paid off by big corps

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

Look you can write the funny numbers in whatever accounting mumbo jumbo you want, but I paid more to cover the cost to the supplier == I paid the tariffs.

So on Earth 2 in which everything is the same except these tariffs hadn't been enacted, would today's consumer prices be the same or lower?

Let's call it what it is, a massive wealth transfer from the general public to companies, and transitively (primarily) to the super-rich. Just because it's legal that they are robbing us blind does not make it right.

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.

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.

This answer is the incarnation of capitalismmaxxing. Economically speaking you're correct - but morally definitely not, companies are for the bigger part not the harmed party here.

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.

In other words: the president can break the law and fuck you over by transferring a nice chunk of your money to big companies, and none of the lawbreakers will be held accountable in any way, and you're not owed a dime in restitution.

No one cares.

Congress can act to pay back the economically harmed party, the consumer. They won't because we live in an oligarchy.

"I didn't kill him, officer. It was the bullet."

> 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...

You'll need to ask companies that are going to get that government refund.

same place where your refund is for congress rolling out 10%+ inflation for years and now your dollar is worth less. its theft actually

That's going to lockheed martin.

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.

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.

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).

They will do this right before raising the prices on all goods to 30% before the sale deal.

I like this idea. It's a good pr move for the business too

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.

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.

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...

To blame in a second order but this is the admin's work overall, they shouldn't have tried to fund their PACs and pocket this money into their family & friends' bank accounts. Just shows how broken the system is.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything is taxed including payroll.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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!

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.”

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.

... 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?

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.

It's COVID PPP all over again... Expect more asset inflation.

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.

Yet another successful Republican transfer of wealth from the people who do the work (employees) to the people who don't (owners).

Tax to businesses? You think the costs were only passed down once? Really?

that was the plan all along

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Oh cool. US people paid for the tariffs. Now they are going to pay for the refund

Well US population voted, hence the results. Maybe there are some subtle lessons to be learned?

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.

I ache for the day we were governed by people who were competent and wanted to govern.

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.

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.

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.

Some of us knew about the un-lubed dildo of consequences. And warned our fellow countrymen. But they appear to have joined a cult and were immune to reason. Now we are all riding the said dildo, whether we asked for it or not.

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.

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

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?

So we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?

If consumers indirectly pay the cost of tariffs, who pays for the dead-weight loss of taxes on domestic employers?

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.

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.

Do consumers get a refund too re: inflated prices for the items they bought?

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.

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.

Ha, ha, ha. Someone, somewhere, ordering government to do something. Thank you for the best laugh today.

And notice that the refunds are TO THE COMPANIES.

This was the plan from the get-go:

    1. Illegal tariffs made
    2. Companies pay tariffs
    3. Companies sell goods with tariff passed on
    4. tariffs deemed illegal
    5. companies get refunds on tariffs
    6. COMPANIES KEEP TARIFFS
    7. The customers get fucked.

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.

Good. Perhaps the administration should follow the law.

If I illegally forced a bunch of people to give me $130 billion, the courts would not stop at making me pay them back. I and all my co-conspirators would go to prison forever. We should accept nothing less here.

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.

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.

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-...

You've been sucked in by an online lie and are spreading it as fact:

"Amid online claims Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, senior executives at Cantor Fitzgerald, could benefit from the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling, a firm spokesperson told Newsweek it has “never executed any transactions or taken risk on the legality of tariffs.""

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-money-...

Is it insider trading to bet on a Supreme Court verdict? It's not like it was a slam dunk. The decision was 6-3.

Could you go into detail about what you think happened? The tariffs were public knowledge, and the suits to invalidate them were public knowledge. Are you saying you think the Supreme Court justices secretly communicated to the Commerce Secretary how they intended to rule on the case, far in advance of publishing their ruling?

Cantor Fitzgerald lost most of its staff in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Lutnick sued American Airlines, eventually settling for $135 million [1]. He claimed this would largely go to the family of hte victims.

Turns out most (if not all) of it went to the senior executive team, wtih himself being the primary beneficiary [2].

This is also the same Howard Lutnick who the DoJ accidentally released a photo of with Jeffrey Epstein [3]. People noticed and they removed it. People noticed that too so they restored it.

Just so we're all clear who Howard Lutnick is.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/busine.ss/judge-approves-ame...

[2]: https://x.com/FinanceLancelot/status/2022877480516813077

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/howard-lutni...

Similar to how Noem gave a contract for 143 million to an 8 day old company with an address at her former political operative’s home.

The admin is just here to literally steal tax dollars.

  > Now if this isn't insider trading (by the literal Commerce Secretary), I don't know what is.

I agree that you don’t know what insider trading is.

If there was any justice at all left in this country, a class action lawsuit with the entire US population as the class would arrange for the tariff refunds to go to individuals, not companies.

That'd neatly address this particular instance of insider trading, and probably many other similar schemes that didn't make it into the press.

might not be 'insider trading' with respect to the court decision, but Lutnick had influence with the president and could affect tariffs being paid by the various companies who were squeezed in to considering selling (or actually selling) their tariff refund rights. And tariffs changed many times over months, so... looking at what companies actually sold to CF might reveal some patterns that raise eyebrows. But nothing will be done about it.

This assumes companies would have refunded consumers.

Obviously if a company did this, refunding consumers was the last thing on their mind.

That’s smart though. If you don’t want to lose your rights to tariff refunds, don’t sell them. Would the alternative be to forbid companies from selling those rights in this case?

As for whether consumers should get anything, I’m sympathetic. It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? You’d have to quantify how much overhead they’ve paid in tariffs, and that seems like an IRS-scale job. Dealing with it at the scale of individual companies is at least tractable.

The corruptions of this administration are legion, but this isn't one of them. Unless you can point to something Lutnick did to create this outcome, I don't see how he had a better view of the whole thing than anyone else.

Well it's not, but that aside, how would consumers ever get a refund?

Show up with a banana peel at a grocery, and say you want a tariff refund for the banana you paid cash for, 6 months ago?

There's no tracking for almost all of tariff affected purchases.

As coming from a semi-corrupt country I can assure you that the Commerce Secretary can have massive access to classified information from any part of the public sector, including any Court. For him all this is one to two telephone calls away. The question is if he has influence in the decisions, which elevates the corruption to the next level.

For the nonbelievers: why did only a company led by close relatives of a government member and no other bet on a game that is based on a Court decision?

> Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being correct on that bet, while, of course, consumers get nothing.

Even if they hadn't made that bet were consumers going to get anything? The refunds would go to whoever directly paid the tariffs, which will generally be businesses.

I doubt that many businesses will go the effort of figuring out how much of any price increases they did while those tariffs were in effect raised the price for each individual customer, and issue refunds for that amount.

> ...bought the rights to their potential tariff refunds for 20% of the value...

So - with umpteen $billion on the line, and all the big-shot lobbyists and Washington insiders and experts that all those huge companies had on payroll to advise them - they decided to sell at 20 cents on the dollar.

Theory: When the far-smarter-than-us money bets big, they might know the actual odds.

You forgot to mention that Mr. Lutnik is also a close personal friend of a pedophile-turned-Mossad-agent-turned-pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island. Mr. Lutnik deliberately and purposefully lied to congress about it, and faced no charges for lying to congress.

In a just world, someone like that would be jailed indefinitely and made to publicly take stand about his activities, and called out to his face during depositions about his lies.

The executive class are out to get as much as they can as quickly as they can while the music plays, then retire to whatever luxury boltholt they can prepare. It's FIRE with private islands, and without even a figleaf of noblesse oblige any more.

People are quibbling about the definition of insider trading. I will just say when fortunes are made by those who just happen to be in close proximity to power, it's not good for the country. Kushner is the prime example here.

I fail to see the problem, people voted for this, did they not?

Just about everyone on the left has been saying these tariffs were illegal since day one.

It's not insider trading that they acted on that consensus.

This is collusion between the offices of POTUS, SCOTUS, and corporate friends that looks like insider trading, from a zoomed in lens.

For it to be insider trading, he would have had to have access to private information from the Supreme Court, which seems unlikely.

This type of financialization should be illegal

> while, of course, consumers get nothing

This would have been the case no mattern what.

> Now if this isn't insider trading [...], I don't know what is.

Correct.

I believe, with huge disappointment, that this level of corruption has been normalised in this administration and that nothing will come out of this.

But they are sticking it to the libs, so it’s all worth it?

The reading I’ve done elsewhere suggests that it’s far from a done deal that companies will be able to extract refunds from the government. For example if doing so offends Trump and causes him to try to extract concessions elsewhere. Or if the government simply drags their feet on various ways.

“Trump’s buddy’s son offers 20c/$” does not seem like a terrible deal for getting your money out.

The CF rabbit hole is wild. Somehow he manages to make a lot of money during tragedies and economic downturns.

I don't buy into the conspiracies, but it is quite odd how he always manages to come up on top.

https://www.reddit.com/r/911archive/comments/1r5rkk3/howard_...

But... who would make a bet with a counterparty like that? Hello, I'm a trump administration insider, here to make a bet with you about the future of one of Trump's policies. You'd have to be pretty stupid.

It’s not that surprising. The entire tariff saga was one trading opportunity after another for insiders who knew which announcements were going to come out.

Lutnick is a particularly corrupt individual though. He’s in the Epstein files like Trump and Musk and Thiel. But he also took over Cantor by suing the widow of Cantor after his death. And now he hands the company to children and has no shame about openly nepotistical decisions like this.

Cantor Fitzgerald is sleezy, but you’ve got the reason wrong. They’re sleezy because they bet against the administration.

But it’s not “insider trading.” They didn’t have insider information on how the courts were going to rule—especially where it was a 6-3 split with three conservatives siding against the administration. And a split in the appellate court as well, with two republican and two democrat appointees siding for the administration.

And Cantor had nothing to do with imposing these tariffs in the first place. Trump loves tariffs. He has been wanting to do these tariffs since the 1980s. He imposed tariffs in his first term and campaigned on imposing them now.

So you’re taking a story about Cantor Fitzgerald displaying disloyalty to Trump and trying to turn it into a “corruption” story that makes no sense.

What they sold isn't a security regulated by the SEC. There is no "insider trading". There aren't enough facts to determine if what his sons did was ethical and/or legal.

>Now they stand to make huge returns of 3 to 5x for being correct on that bet

...assuming they held those rights on their books, rather than selling it off to other hedge funds.

Howard Lutnick was an architect and promoter of Trump's tariff strategy. He was involved in setting it up. 'Set up' being the operative verbiage.

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/howard-lutnick-criticis...

https://businessplus.ie/news/howard-lutnick-donald-trumps-tr...

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/2026/01/30/how-a...

That's some third-world shit.

Good luck with that.

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

Chaos is a ladder.

Trump doesn't care who went bankrupt or lost money, he was able to create a whole pile of red number buying opportunities for his friends in the know. And for himself.

It's now an age of oligarchy, stable corporate capitalism and gentlemanly bourgeois behaviour and the appearance of "rules based order" and equally brokered commerce is out, schoolyard bully attitude and "give me your lunch money" is in.

If you still want to profit, you make friends with the right people, kiss the ring, and get permission to become a highwayman or parasite like the rest of them.

At the bottom, is us. I don't think any election can put the cork back in this bottle. The only thing that will end this decline is an angry non-compliant populace that is sick of getting a very bad deal.

Trump should sign an executive order to appropriate the money for himself. Then all the other rich folks will learn what it feels like to be on be on the losing end of government wealth redistribution. I think Trump would deserve the money as tuition fee!

in other news:

https://newrepublic.com/post/206882/trump-commerce-secretary...

Also in other news:

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-money-...

Trump is not a competent person. How did he ever get rich?

Sounds impossible. As everybody knows, you need to be competent to get rich.

He won the sperm lottery. That’s how he got rich.

Side topic, but this number puts into how crazy it was for trump[0] to go on tariff war against enemies and friends alike. All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA.

Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ?

$7T of spending, $1.77T in deficit[1] and they planned to fix this hole with $100B?!

Masterminds!

…and now they need to refund it.

NB: also puts into perspective how numb I became about reading AI and AI related sums of money, and how crazy actually those numbers are.

[0] off course many knew that it’s crazy way before it happened.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_bud...

Astronomical tariffs in some cases, trade wars and dramas, alienate all allies and from all of this they got only $130B ?

Maybe that was never the point. You present it as retaliation against 'countries that are out to get us'. Introduce the tariffs, companies pay the tariffs by increasing prices for consumers, get the inevitable loss in court, return the tariff money to the companies.

You just transferred $130B of wealth from citizens to companies.

Bonus: people are now used to the higher prices, so post-tariffs your profits are also higher.

Maybe I don't understand as I'm an outsider, but as per my recent comment on this topic [0], I fail to see the logic of how "other countries" pay the US when the tariffs are paid by the importer and not the other country which is exporting.

I do acknowledge that import taxes can in theory help local industries, especially if the other countries are subsidizing exported goods.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47238951

> tariff war against enemies

This is an interesting way to frame a tax on Americans, but it aligns with this administrations actions.

I am old enough to remember when the great minds at DOGE found $10T a year of fraudulent Social Security spending which would have cut the total governement spending from $7T a year to negative $3T.

The DOGE refund cheque is of course, in the mail.

It's clear that there was no reasoned thought behind the tariff push. Tariffs can work if implemented in a principled way and coupled with a complementary industrial policy to develop critical sectors of the economy.

Instead, we had a completely chaotic implementation of tariffs which seemed to be completely at the whim of Trump with zero supportive industrial policy. So much so that the term 'Taco' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out was coined to describe Trump's approach.

The charitable explanation is that Trump had no plan and was making it up as he went along. The less charitable explanation is that the chaos was an intentional feature to enable a quid pro quo of favourable policy in exchange for under the table payments via crypto or 'investments' in his family's various businesses.

When you couple completely illegal application of a supposed 'emergency' to invoke tariffs with a chaotic, whim based implementation, is there any wonder that they failed?

The biggest damage is the souring of relations with other countries, who now no longer see the US as a reliable business partner. They have nudged countries in the EU to rather look to China. The longer Trump is in office, the bigger the damage gets. The long term course might already be set away from the US and towards China. The loss for the US cannot even be estimated yet.

Also the US is working hard on losing their military dominance. Engaging in unnecessary wars, offending its allies left and right, who are now starting to invest more into their own military, since they have learned, that they cannot rely on the US any longer, while China plays the catch-up game and is getting closer to US military capability every year.

Reputational damage is enormous of course and the US hands China easy PR wins after wins.

This seems to be the current trend. Projecting this into the future, it seems likely, that in 10, 20, 30 years from now, the most powerful global player might be China, instead of the US. Obviously, in decades a lot can happen. Future US administrations however have got a lot of repair work cut out for them. How can they convince international partners, that this does not repeat in the future, the next time a crazy administration is elected? Can they at all? Or can they fix the political landscape in their own country in that timespan? It kinda looks like their are stuck.

They need to refund it *with interest*, according to filings cited in the article.

The rest is financed by debt. The theft-class stole the rest from the govt thru debt, and expect the rest of us and the following generations to deal with the fallout while they sit on top of their obscene gobs of cash insulated from the fire they created.

Friends? America has no friends, only client states.

It's unbelievable he's still given any semblance of credence for anything he does. Trump is just palpably stupid. He is bad at absorbing information, he is bad at analytical thinking, he is impatient, vain and rash. Aside from his tenuous legal justification, he never once publicly expressed even a fundamental understanding of the basic mechanics of tariff collection nor what balance of trade actually means. You'd constantly see his proxies on TV just put words in his mouth to bend his foolish policy into some coherent. And we're seeing it again with the attack on Iran. No strategy, no achievable objectives, no comprehension of basic facts on the ground. He's really really really just stupid.

The dude is a moron: to think there was any thought behind this is to be insane.

The $130B is only part of the economic costs of the tariffs. Many companies and people changed their buying behavior, either paying more to a domestic company or maybe a company in a country with a lower tariff rate or changed their behavior to not require an item all together. We've also heard about small companies that have gone out of business.

I'm not an economist but I assume economists are writing papers about this kind of thing to estimate the effects.

> they planned to fix this hole with $100B?!

No one is or ever was planning on fixing any "holes".

Trump is drilling holes all over the boat and taking what he can.

After he's dead, others will have to deal with the sinking ship.

The point is to bankrupt the country so the robber barons can buy up all the assets for pennies on the dollar.

That $130B will pay for 4 months of the Iran war with a current run rate of <checks clipboard> $1B per day.

We’re definitely not going to get even a reduction in healthcare costs any time soon.

and from all of this they got only $130B ?

I wonder if your thoughts would be any different if they managed to get enough to actually pay off the deficit?

this reminds me of the Indian government's (read Modi's) demonetization efforts of 2016 which caused 80+ deaths and huge headaches for the common people. In the end, more than 99.3% of the demonetized money came back in circulation. Elect a clown, expect a circus. true for the oldest democracy in the world and also true for the largest democracy.

> All the propaganda and extortionist language about how all countries will pay up to USA.

Sounds a bit like Brexit.

The purpose of the tariffs was to strong-arm countries into unfair trade deals, not to collect revenue

-They only got 130B -They planned to fix all this with 100B?

I see what you did there. 70B eh? They only got 50B. A paltry 20B?

The real number though, was gotten in a relatively short time. And now replacement tariffs are on the way. And many companies have re-thought of manufacturing outside US with the higher tariffs always being the possibility in the future too.

I had the same thought, but really I think a lot of it is just spectacle for his more gullible followers.

I mean, FFS--we have a nominally Republican candidate who campaigned on raising taxes and was elected anyway!

You'd have to be pretty gullible to think that raising taxes on imported goods won't result in price hikes at the checkout counter.

> Astronomical tariffs [...] and from all of this they got only $130B ?

Which is it? A number can't be small and large at the same time.

No, Trump manufactured negotiating leverage out of thin air— nothing, really. He extracted concessions on something like a bluff. Plus, didn’t he also extract a budget that in retrospect wasn’t appropriate had the tariff revenue been removed?

"Trump brags in Oval Office that his billionaire pals made a killing in stocks after he pulled the plug on tariffs"

> “He made $2.5 billion, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad!” Trump said, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and then NASCAR team owner Roger Penske.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/trump-brags-oval-office-billionair...

I mean 130 billion is a significant amount of money, and it's more remarkable given the tax is unnoticeable to the average consumer and primarily impacted foreign manufacturers (either forcing them to move to the US or more friendly countries). The deficit wasn't built in two years and I don't think it could be solved in two years either.

Hedging in case Argentina might need another bailout.

Paywalled.

Probably unintended but this is a great pun.

Humorously, this fits the topic quite well

Private businesses get refunded and a payday, prices for the consumer stay high (because consumers have proven that they can bear them), and inflation goes up.

Clearly, this makes America great again. /s

What if lowering prices actually resulted in enough extra sales that it provided more profit?

What if this was the plan, so those importers can make money?

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