6 ms·

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.

• Jeremy1026 8mo ago
  > probably Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.
  • commandlinefan 8mo ago
    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.
    • rootusrootus 8mo ago
      Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.
      • thingscoledoes 8mo ago
        Source?
        • Jeremy1026 8mo ago
          Joint Economic Committee a good enough source? https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2/updated-data-american-families-have-already-paid-more-than-1-700-each-in-tariff-costs-since-trump-entered-office https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2... Or Tax Foundation? https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/ https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs...
      • superxpro12 8mo ago
        A large cap company I totally dont work at paid 4% of revenue in tariffs last year. Our bonuses were cut in half. I dont have visibility into our customer pricing. It is fucking obscene how stupid this tax is. And all for what? So billionaires can get a bit richer? How did this help us, like at all???
        • warkdarrior 8mo ago
          Judge actions by their outcomes, not by their stated purpose.
          • r2_pilot 8mo ago
            POSIWID, the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. A quick way to cut through bullshit and "But I meant for X to do Y"
        • zuminator 8mo ago
          All this fuckery makes it hard to keep track of financial inflows and outflows, which in turn makes it easy to commit graft and corruption. Especially coupled with the forced retirement of those principled people formerly in bureaucratic positions, and the lack of consequences for lying and scheming on behalf of the kleptocracy.
    • stevenwoo 8mo ago
      It depends on if one thinks 10-20 percent is significant. Do you cook your own food - some food items are imported during USA winter months and those items went up noticeably, also items that are not grown/harvested in significant quantities in USA went up. The only things I did not see a price increase were US sourced oatmeal, rice and flour, stuff where they are selling stuff that could be from before tariff times. Coffee went up due to bad harvests but the tariffs added to that, and now that harvests are back to normal, prices haven't gone back down commensurately.
    • Jeremy1026 8mo ago
      I get more or less the same items from the grocery store every week. My grocery store shows me purchases going back a year. 3/9/25 - 45 items - $178.98 3/15/25 - 40 items - $187.13 3/22/25 - 59 items - $315.29 3/29/25 - 45 items - $131.36 ... 2/14/25 - 48 items - $238.15 2/21/25 - 17 items - $117.49 (used $45 in coupons from store loyalty points, actual cost $162.49) 2/28/25 - 27 items - $165.27 My grocery bill definitely is feeling it, now is it 100% tariffs, probably not. But research points to it being some what related to tariffs [1,2,3] You'll notice in the most recent shops, I have been trying to skip the non-essentials when possible to keep my bill lower. I don't have any other regular purchases with history to look back on. It's not like I replace all my consumer electronics every 6 months-1 year. Closest thing that I have to consistent historical data is 3D printer filament, which has gone from $15.99 to $16.99 on Amazon for my brand of choice from April 2025 to my most recent order last week. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-food-prices/ https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-food-prices/ [2] https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-june-17-2025 https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-june-17... [3] https://www.edelmanfinancialengines.com/education/life-events/tariffs-impacting-price-of-groceries/ https://www.edelmanfinancialengines.com/education/life-event...
    • throwaway667555 8mo ago
      Look at the CPI chart and draw a trend line ignoring recent years. You'll see we're living under 2034 price levels currently.
    • SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
      Tariffs don't work like that. These are taxes that businesses have to pay and as a result, they pass on to the consumer. Larger companies have some room (in some cases) to absorb some of these costs. While smaller companies do not. These can literally put people out of business overnight. Here is a specific example: https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/idaho-business-owner-casey-ames-of-harkla-hit-with-huge-tariff-bill/ https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/idaho-business-owner-c...
  • intrasight 8mo ago
    The "Importer of Record" gets the refund. I read that a large fraction of those importer of record are Chinese companies.
    • Jeremy1026 8mo ago
      Yes, but when the product costs went up to cover their fees who paid that? We did. So the "Importer of Record" will (maybe) get a refund from the government, while also getting the higher prices paid to them from the distributors/consumers.
      • vuln 8mo ago
        yes scotus hates poors and is complete bought out by the rich
    • superxpro12 8mo ago
      read from where? Because over 92% of tariff costs were born by domestic importers. Thats american companies who then offload that tax through higher purchasing costs. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-for-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/ https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is...
      • intrasight 8mo ago
        That article doesn't even mention nonresident importers (NRIs). The percentage that are NRIs is not public information but it is believed to have grown during this trade conflict. What got my attention on this was this HN comment by rstuart4133: "There are Non-Resident Importers, which are foreign companies that import goods into the USA, but do not have a presence in the United States. About 15% of USA imports come through NRIs. For them this reversal sets up a true irony. Trump effectively forced US citizens to pay more the imported goods. He thought that money would go to the USA treasury. Now the US treasury has to pay it back, so it is a free gift to the exporting countries. Like China. Truly delicious."
      • loeg 8mo ago
  • snarf21 8mo ago
    It is almost as if this was a planned wealth transfer that was immensely succesful.
  • jlarocco 8mo ago
    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?
    • warkdarrior 8mo ago
      The other important point is that those 2000 one-pound bags sold, so the market accepted the new higher price. Even after the tariffs are removed, the higher prices are here to stay.
    • xp84 8mo ago
      Not only can’t you track down the 1,000 rice buyers, you don’t have any legal obligation to, so you 100% wouldn’t. (Not speaking of “you” just the general case of all importers who get refunds).
    • tzs 8mo ago
      If you wanted to pass the refund on wouldn't the most sensible way be to pass it on to the two supermarkets since they were the actual buyers from you? If the supermarket that raised prices wants to pass that on to their 1000 buyers that would be for them to deal with, not you.
  • aarnii 8mo ago
    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.
• wutwutwat 8mo ago
  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.
• rootusrootus 8mo ago
  I suspect that money is involved. We’re becoming numb to it.
• bickfordb 8mo ago
  The latest temporary tariffs are also likely illegal.
  • badgersnake 8mo ago
    Well if it works, they’re gonna keep doing it.
  • teeray 8mo ago
    Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be an express lane for litigation similar actions like this.
    • vuln 8mo ago
      we can’t even do that with violent criminal let alone white color criminals. lol
      • amenhotep 8mo ago
        This is a silly point. Courts aren't sitting around umming and ahhing about whether they should issue an arrest warrant to get x violent criminal off the streets, the system wastes minimal time in apprehending them and putting them in jail. At THAT point things slow to a crawl - because there's no longer the urgent incentive to act to prevent further harm. Whereas in these cases the government is potentially harming the entire public every single day that the courts don't act.
    • stefan_ 8mo ago
      There is an express lane, it's reserved for the government appealing cases, in which any and all injunctions are halted because the court has unilaterally decided to interpret "not being able to do illegal shit" as "great harm" while there is no harm in sending people to torture prisons abroad on the flimsiest of evidence. They sure took their time with this one.
  • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
    I thought those were on very solid ground commonly used by past administrations?
• UltraSane 8mo ago
  There is no excuse for how long it took the Supreme court to decide this very obvious case.
  • vuln 8mo ago
    they waited until the robes slowed down.
• oofbey 8mo ago
  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.
• jasondigitized 8mo ago
  I like Class Action lawsuits for $100 please
• dweinus 8mo ago
  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!
  • dweinus 8mo ago
    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.
• hypercube33 8mo ago
  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.
• empath75 8mo ago
  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.
  • vuln 8mo ago
    scouts got paid off by big corps
• wat10000 8mo ago
  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....
  • endemic 8mo ago
    > 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.
  • doom2 8mo ago
    Just wait until the next Democratic president is elected. The current crop of Republicans will suddenly remember that Congress can exercise this power.
    • peebee67 8mo ago
      You must be young.
• suzdude 8mo ago
  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-congress-ability-challenge-trump-tariffs-2025-03-11/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/house-republicans-block-con...
  • pnt12 8mo ago
    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.
• epolanski 8mo ago
  > 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.
  • ianburrell 8mo 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.
    • Saline9515 8mo ago
      Parliamentary systems have a very hard time strategizing in especially larger countries.
  • Saline9515 8mo ago
    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.
    • stefan_ 8mo ago
      I don't know about that, somehow Macron is still around. Who knows what he will come up with to extend his time while having zero support.
• wombatpm 8mo ago
  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.