3 ms·

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 r

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.

bhouston 8mo ago
> 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? Definitely smart, but also sure looks like an insider play / corruption / self-dealing.
- Ajedi32 8mo ago
  The commerce secretary has no control over what the Supreme Court does. Anyone could have read the law and decided whether they thought the tariffs were legal or not.
  - simmerup 8mo ago
    But he does know that Trump had no plan to contest the supreme court or make new laws
    - NetMageSCW 8mo ago
      Trump doesn’t have those powers.
      - simmerup 8mo ago
        Trump doesn't have a lot of powers he's using regardless Like starting wars and creating tarrifs. He could have just broke the law again
  - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
    The commerce secretary has in this case a huge conflict of interest in pushing for these illegal policies in the first place
    - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
      The commerce secretary wasn't the one pushing for them in the first place. The president was. I mean, look, there's plenty of conflicts of interest, and stuff that sure looks like graft, and claims of people making insane amounts of money off of stuff. But in this case, the commerce secretary's options were 1) do the tariffs or 2) get fired. Minion? Sure. Minion without the self-respect or ethics to quit when they were being told to do unconstitutional stuff? Also sure. Pushing these policies, as though they had agency in the matter? No.
podgietaru 8mo ago
Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds that the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that they needed a cash injection to stay afloat. Don't sell your right to your tariff refund is one of those things that sounds good in principle, but falls apart when you apply some sense to it.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds that the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that they needed a cash injection to stay afloat. No? You also do it for certainly. "One bird in hand beats two in the bush" and all that. You see this occurring outside of tariff refunds, with businesses selling debts to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar, or bond holders selling high risk bonds (eg. Argentina) for steep discounts.
- phil21 8mo ago
  Is a 20 cent on the dollar or so payment for the new tariff expense really going to save a company that much on the bubble? I'm sure there are a few exceptional cases, but that doesn't seem to me like it would be the typical cases. A company needing to pay $100 in tariffs but then the $20 of cash infusion being the thing that saves the day seems rather unlikely. I'd say it's more likely this was a profit center to more companies than it was a life line. As in they passed the tariff down to their consumers, and also collected the 20% as a cash payment to juice the bottom line. More common though would be simply a way to help defray some costs and provide certainty.
  - NetMageSCW 8mo ago
    I really hope those companies that passed the tariff to consumers are required to refund the increase to those same consumers, regardless of whether they sold their refund or not.
vincnetas 8mo ago
i guess there would be much more initiative for Lutnik not to refund (ignore courts order, or drag them out like in other cases) if no one would have sold their rights to refund.
jacquesm 8mo ago
It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. If you think this is smart then you may as well go around clubbing old ladies over their heads, as long as you don't get caught it's like free money right? The alternative is not to forbid companies from selling those rights, the alternative is to undo this deal and pay the whole amount back to those that originally forked it over and who needed to sell these 'rights' in order to keep their companies alive.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. Where's the extortion? The "it's a nice shop you got there..." racket only works if you can strongly influence whether the damages occur (ie. you tell your goons to attack the shop, or not). So far as I can tell however, that's not the case, because Trump wanted the tariffs to stay, and was sad that they got revoked. Going back to the mob analogy, it would be like if the mob boss asked for protection money, the goons didn't damage the shop, the mob boss was sad that the shop didn't get damaged, and then went to to find some other way to damage the shop (ie. section 122 tariffs).
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    You think businesses as a rule can all survive a 15 to 100% surcharge on their products without running into liquidity issues?
    - bluGill 8mo ago
      Those are a sunk cost at this point though. The business likely is better off having sold and got the money now - vs risking they will never get a refund.
    - gruez 8mo ago
      The stocks of major retailers haven't cratered, so maybe? You're going to have to present some figures rather than just asking rhetorical questions.
coldpie 8mo ago
> It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? This was the point of the tariffs, wasn't it? The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible. Sure maybe half of it will go where it ought to as a fig leaf, but a very large chunk of that cash will be making its way to Trump's loyalty crew.
- magicalhippo 8mo ago
  > The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible. The government knows exactly who paid what in duties, otherwise they couldn't tell if you were trying to avoid duties. So they know exactly who to pay back and how much.
  - coldpie 8mo ago
    > The government knows exactly who paid what in duties No, they have a record of who handed the money over to the government. This does not tell you who paid the duties. There's going to be a whole lot of Trump toadies & business owners in the chain, siphoning cash from refunds before they work their way back to the people who actually paid them. And that's not even getting into the open corruption & fraud that will be happening as part of this as well.
    - magicalhippo 8mo ago
      > 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.
      - 8mo ago
hermanzegerman 8mo ago
It's enriching himself on the taxpayers expense. Or would you trust someone on advising you, that has a pretty huge financial interest in proposing you policies that will fail because they are illegal?
- NetMageSCW 8mo ago
  What evidence do you have that those tariffs were proposed by him?
  - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
    He bragged about it, and certainly didn't spoke out against them So I pitch these ideas, and he says, ‘Let’s do it.’ ” Why not replace the I.R.S. with an External Revenue Service, which will collect tariffs and other levies from foreign sources instead of taxing citizens? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/donald-trumps-tariff-dealmaker-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/donald-trumps-...
UncleMeat 8mo ago
Imagine instead if the government didn't do the illegal thing in the first place. Or if the supreme court had not intervened on the initial stay of the tariffs to allow them to go into place while the suit proceeded. The fact that businesses were put in a position to make this choice is outrageous in the first place.
nkohari 8mo ago
I don't think anyone is disagreeing it's a shrewd decision by the corporations, just that it shouldn't benefit the Secretary of Commerce. We're a long way from having to put your peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid the perception of corruption.
izacus 8mo ago
Calling outright corruption at the expense of citizens as "smart" is quite a statement of morality O.o
- pocksuppet 8mo ago
  In this economy, morality is dead. There is only profit extraction.

bhouston 8mo ago

> 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? Definitely smart, but also sure looks like an insider play / corruption / self-dealing.

Ajedi32 8mo ago
The commerce secretary has no control over what the Supreme Court does. Anyone could have read the law and decided whether they thought the tariffs were legal or not.
- simmerup 8mo ago
  But he does know that Trump had no plan to contest the supreme court or make new laws
  - NetMageSCW 8mo ago
    Trump doesn’t have those powers.
    - simmerup 8mo ago
      Trump doesn't have a lot of powers he's using regardless Like starting wars and creating tarrifs. He could have just broke the law again
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  The commerce secretary has in this case a huge conflict of interest in pushing for these illegal policies in the first place
  - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
    The commerce secretary wasn't the one pushing for them in the first place. The president was. I mean, look, there's plenty of conflicts of interest, and stuff that sure looks like graft, and claims of people making insane amounts of money off of stuff. But in this case, the commerce secretary's options were 1) do the tariffs or 2) get fired. Minion? Sure. Minion without the self-respect or ethics to quit when they were being told to do unconstitutional stuff? Also sure. Pushing these policies, as though they had agency in the matter? No.

podgietaru 8mo ago

Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds that the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that they needed a cash injection to stay afloat. Don't sell your right to your tariff refund is one of those things that sounds good in principle, but falls apart when you apply some sense to it.

gruez 8mo ago
>Wasn't the whole point of selling your right to refunds that the initial tariff was so onerous to businesses that they needed a cash injection to stay afloat. No? You also do it for certainly. "One bird in hand beats two in the bush" and all that. You see this occurring outside of tariff refunds, with businesses selling debts to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar, or bond holders selling high risk bonds (eg. Argentina) for steep discounts.
phil21 8mo ago
Is a 20 cent on the dollar or so payment for the new tariff expense really going to save a company that much on the bubble? I'm sure there are a few exceptional cases, but that doesn't seem to me like it would be the typical cases. A company needing to pay $100 in tariffs but then the $20 of cash infusion being the thing that saves the day seems rather unlikely. I'd say it's more likely this was a profit center to more companies than it was a life line. As in they passed the tariff down to their consumers, and also collected the 20% as a cash payment to juice the bottom line. More common though would be simply a way to help defray some costs and provide certainty.
- NetMageSCW 8mo ago
  I really hope those companies that passed the tariff to consumers are required to refund the increase to those same consumers, regardless of whether they sold their refund or not.

vincnetas 8mo ago

i guess there would be much more initiative for Lutnik not to refund (ignore courts order, or drag them out like in other cases) if no one would have sold their rights to refund.

jacquesm 8mo ago

It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. If you think this is smart then you may as well go around clubbing old ladies over their heads, as long as you don't get caught it's like free money right? The alternative is not to forbid companies from selling those rights, the alternative is to undo this deal and pay the whole amount back to those that originally forked it over and who needed to sell these 'rights' in order to keep their companies alive.

gruez 8mo ago
>It's not smart, it's extortion by someone connected to the state and self dealing. Where's the extortion? The "it's a nice shop you got there..." racket only works if you can strongly influence whether the damages occur (ie. you tell your goons to attack the shop, or not). So far as I can tell however, that's not the case, because Trump wanted the tariffs to stay, and was sad that they got revoked. Going back to the mob analogy, it would be like if the mob boss asked for protection money, the goons didn't damage the shop, the mob boss was sad that the shop didn't get damaged, and then went to to find some other way to damage the shop (ie. section 122 tariffs).
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  You think businesses as a rule can all survive a 15 to 100% surcharge on their products without running into liquidity issues?
  - bluGill 8mo ago
    Those are a sunk cost at this point though. The business likely is better off having sold and got the money now - vs risking they will never get a refund.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    The stocks of major retailers haven't cratered, so maybe? You're going to have to present some figures rather than just asking rhetorical questions.

coldpie 8mo ago

> It’s a matter of implementation though. How would you refund so many people? This was the point of the tariffs, wasn't it? The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible. Sure maybe half of it will go where it ought to as a fig leaf, but a very large chunk of that cash will be making its way to Trump's loyalty crew.

magicalhippo 8mo ago
> The White House now has a $130B slush fund to distribute more or less however they want, with no accountability because accountability is by-design impossible. The government knows exactly who paid what in duties, otherwise they couldn't tell if you were trying to avoid duties. So they know exactly who to pay back and how much.
- coldpie 8mo ago
  > The government knows exactly who paid what in duties No, they have a record of who handed the money over to the government. This does not tell you who paid the duties. There's going to be a whole lot of Trump toadies & business owners in the chain, siphoning cash from refunds before they work their way back to the people who actually paid them. And that's not even getting into the open corruption & fraud that will be happening as part of this as well.
  - magicalhippo 8mo ago
    > 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.
    - 8mo ago

hermanzegerman 8mo ago

It's enriching himself on the taxpayers expense. Or would you trust someone on advising you, that has a pretty huge financial interest in proposing you policies that will fail because they are illegal?

NetMageSCW 8mo ago
What evidence do you have that those tariffs were proposed by him?
- hermanzegerman 8mo ago
  He bragged about it, and certainly didn't spoke out against them So I pitch these ideas, and he says, ‘Let’s do it.’ ” Why not replace the I.R.S. with an External Revenue Service, which will collect tariffs and other levies from foreign sources instead of taxing citizens? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/donald-trumps-tariff-dealmaker-in-chief https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/donald-trumps-...

UncleMeat 8mo ago

Imagine instead if the government didn't do the illegal thing in the first place. Or if the supreme court had not intervened on the initial stay of the tariffs to allow them to go into place while the suit proceeded. The fact that businesses were put in a position to make this choice is outrageous in the first place.

nkohari 8mo ago

I don't think anyone is disagreeing it's a shrewd decision by the corporations, just that it shouldn't benefit the Secretary of Commerce. We're a long way from having to put your peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid the perception of corruption.

izacus 8mo ago

Calling outright corruption at the expense of citizens as "smart" is quite a statement of morality O.o

pocksuppet 8mo ago
In this economy, morality is dead. There is only profit extraction.