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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...

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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.

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