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> 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 sl

by coldpie 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo 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.
    - coldpie 7mo ago
      If the government charges the importer $20 and the importer charges me $20, then I am in effect the one who paid the duty. If the refund goes to the importer, and it does not come back to me, then the government and the importer have colluded to rob me of $20. This isn't an accident, the owners of the import companies who will benefit from this theft were almost certainly all Trump supporters. In reality, half of the funds will go to that. Maybe even some tiny portion of it will genuinely make its way back to the people who actually paid the duties. This is the fig leaf to which I referred. The other half will go to Trump toadies in the form of "mistakes," fraud, corruption, skimming, unclaimed funds, etc. This is the slush fund to which I referred. In the end, all of it is going to Trump toadies. It's a $130B transfer of wealth to Trump's financial backers.
      - Detrytus 7mo ago
        Maybe I'm naive, but if court orders tariff refunds cannot it also order that the importer must return it to individual buyers? That's only fair, right? Companies don't get to keep the money. If they want to sue government for some extra compensation for their trouble they can do that separately.
      - phil21 7mo ago
        That’s not how commerce works. You agreed with your supplier on a price. You paid it. Doesn’t matter that part of the price was tariffs or component costs or labor. Doesn’t matter if your supplier gets a tax rebate or a kickback from an upstream supplier after the fact. These things are entirely immaterial to the meeting of the minds when you execute the contract for sale. The only moderately fuzzy case is going to be if there is an outright line item for “tariff charge” - I always thought companies were being a bit reckless explicitly adding these as line items due to this exact uncertainty. Very few companies are going to have a perfect 1:1 ratio here so there is some definite business risk in doing so. And no, not even close to all companies that were charged tariffs are “trump toadies” - that’s an absurd claim on its face. The ones I know hurt the most and nearly put out of business due to needing to raise prices certainly were not. And there is zero way they could afford refunding at a 1:1 ratio now.

by coldpie 7mo ago

magicalhippo 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo 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.
  - coldpie 7mo ago
    If the government charges the importer $20 and the importer charges me $20, then I am in effect the one who paid the duty. If the refund goes to the importer, and it does not come back to me, then the government and the importer have colluded to rob me of $20. This isn't an accident, the owners of the import companies who will benefit from this theft were almost certainly all Trump supporters. In reality, half of the funds will go to that. Maybe even some tiny portion of it will genuinely make its way back to the people who actually paid the duties. This is the fig leaf to which I referred. The other half will go to Trump toadies in the form of "mistakes," fraud, corruption, skimming, unclaimed funds, etc. This is the slush fund to which I referred. In the end, all of it is going to Trump toadies. It's a $130B transfer of wealth to Trump's financial backers.
    - Detrytus 7mo ago
      Maybe I'm naive, but if court orders tariff refunds cannot it also order that the importer must return it to individual buyers? That's only fair, right? Companies don't get to keep the money. If they want to sue government for some extra compensation for their trouble they can do that separately.
    - phil21 7mo ago
      That’s not how commerce works. You agreed with your supplier on a price. You paid it. Doesn’t matter that part of the price was tariffs or component costs or labor. Doesn’t matter if your supplier gets a tax rebate or a kickback from an upstream supplier after the fact. These things are entirely immaterial to the meeting of the minds when you execute the contract for sale. The only moderately fuzzy case is going to be if there is an outright line item for “tariff charge” - I always thought companies were being a bit reckless explicitly adding these as line items due to this exact uncertainty. Very few companies are going to have a perfect 1:1 ratio here so there is some definite business risk in doing so. And no, not even close to all companies that were charged tariffs are “trump toadies” - that’s an absurd claim on its face. The ones I know hurt the most and nearly put out of business due to needing to raise prices certainly were not. And there is zero way they could afford refunding at a 1:1 ratio now.