Discussion

hypeatei: I'll always find it amazing how Trump got right wingers to get on board with a national sales tax. Mind boggling.

just-working: It's really more complicated than this.Onshoring manufacturing is something that has to be incentivized and that has positive externalities outside of dollars and cents.But some tariffs were really dumb, like on bananas. We can't grow bananas here...

HumblyTossed: > But some tariffs were really dumb, like on bananas. We can't grow bananas here...Trump and his cabinet don't understand this.

WarmWash: Populist energy

saurik: I don't see why this would be even slightly surprising: that is a common right-wing position and has been for a while? They even made a big run of it in 2023.https://pettersen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Documen...

chuckadams: You could point out the inconsistency, but I really think the cognitive dissonance of constant and pervasive hypocrisy is the point. Truth is whatever the party tells you today, and we have always been at war with EastAsia.

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

SyneRyder: Here's a gift link to access it if you don't have a subscription:https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-...

dcveloper: It's a smart play for a flat tax. Baseline at 15-20% on imports (proxy for flat tax on income). Then push to eliminate income tax. It's very much aligned with conservative view points on income tax and it's progressive nature.

llm_nerd: There is absolutely nothing "smart" about anything being done by this incompetent administration of criminals, rapists and self-dealing grifters. They're just flailing around after everything is turning to shit, going from distraction to distraction.>Baseline at 15-20% on imports (proxy for flat tax on income). Then push to eliminate income tax.The US government generates $2.5 trillion dollars on just individual income taxes.The US has about $3.4 trillion dollars worth of imports.Explain how this makes makes any sense? It's laughable mathematical fantasy to imagine tariffs even denting the deficit, much less eliminating other revenue sources.The US is a massive economic basket case -- it is basically an economically (aside from being morally) bankrupt country -- and I honestly don't even see a way out of it at this point.

estearum: Smart if you ignore mathematics

mothballed: ... 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.

adampunk: The next time you see someone complaining about Democrats on the Internet, you should thank them for this.

ceejayoz: Their skirts were too short and they didn’t scream hard enough, eh?

bdangubic: that was the plan all along

davidw: These people are evil, but also bumbling idiots, so sometimes there is no evil plan, just incompetence.

candiddevmike: There are direct ties from the administration to companies offering hedges against tariffs. There was absolutely an evil plan, IMO.

Herring: 28% of US adults scored at or below Level 1 literacy, indicating significant difficulty with everyday reading tasks. https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-fac...You guys are surrounded by other college-educated SWE, you have no idea how bad it is out there.

general_reveal: This was a coordinated ploy by the security apparatus of the US. Corporations were probably told of this. This was a dry run to signal to whoever we needed to signal to that we have economic weapons. It’s too large of a national security issue (can cause wars) to have been concocted by a populist president. Hallmarks of intelligence (sounds crazy, I know) all over this one.My general sense is that the Cold War never ended. We were not told of the Cuban Missile crisis as it happened. Iran is too close to Russia, always probably was an us vs Russian proxy situation (Syria is a dead giveaway away) for decades now in the Middle East/China.We’ve probably had nukes pointed at each other all day every day, very little is told to the public lest panic ensue.Of course, we can always keep believing what we’re told …

estearum: ...?No, this is the consequence of having an actual stupid person in the Oval Office and the majority party being half coerced and half committed in cultlike devotion to POTUS.Obviously the US has economic weapons. It's the largest economy in the world.If anything this signals that POTUS himself cannot wield those weapons though, and the American public, political, and business apparatuses have little appetite for this use of those weapons.

mothballed: Tariffs (or something like land value tax) are one of the less intrusive forms of taxes since imported goods are already scrutinized and tabulated at the border anyway under the border 4A exception. In theory tariffs are a lot less dystopic in their financial surveillance than stuff like income tax, but you were supposed to drop the income tax when you pick up tariffs, not just use it to make the Swamp larger.

satvikpendem: 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.

add-sub-mul-div: It's such an old and standard and basic playbook. They cultivated fear among the poor about immigrants or some bit of social progress like pronouns. To win power and take whatever actions they believed would enrich themselves. There's never anything more to it than that.

sillysaurusx: 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: > 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: 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.

hermanzegerman: The commerce secretary has in this case a huge conflict of interest in pushing for these illegal policies in the first place

snowwrestler: 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?

simmerup: But he does know that Trump had no plan to contest the supreme court or make new laws

jerf: 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.

WarmWash: 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...

JKCalhoun: Yeah, I got the receipts even—with tariffs itemized.I'll never see that money.

energy123: For it to be insider trading, he would have had to have access to private information from the Supreme Court, which seems unlikely.

jacquesm: Why is that unlikely? It would seem to be a very easy thing to accomplish. For instance, he could just ask.

hermanzegerman: 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 policy's that will fail because they are illegal?

magicalhippo: > refunded to the importer of record. Not the people the costs were passed toI 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.

AdamN: Ironically I was mildly in favor of tariffs from the left pov. Reduced consumption and getting more taxes to help pay down the debt.Consumption was likely mildly reduced (and still is with the 15% tax) but now we have more inflation coming our way when those billions start flowing and our debt just keeps going up.

coldpie: > 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.

jacquesm: 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.

vincnetas: 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.

NickC25: 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.

ModernMech: > we have always been at war with EastAsiaIsn’t the new line that we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years?

mattas: 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.

libertine: Tariffs aren't incentives, the whole thing is upsidedown.

gruez: >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.

petcat: 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.

dcveloper: You're ranting.Most governments are bankrupt.My "smart play" wasn't on the merits of idea, largely the game theory aspect of moving forward to their policy goals after decades of having no traction. It's a unique idea, policy wise. Don't know if it will be effective. Neither do you.

mhb: 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.

Larrikin: Making people spend more money to "save" money is just a sale to increase profits even more.

onlyrealcuzzo: How is it mind boggling? It's a regressive tax. That's literally their MO.They've been pushing the national sales tax to replace income tax since the 2000s (and probably longer).

tt24: National sales tax would be significantly better than income tax. Per head would be even better Unfortunately replacement doesn’t seem to be on the table for anyone.

rayiner: [delayed]

gruez: >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: You think businesses as a rule can all survive a 15 to 100% surcharge on their products without running into liquidity issues?

bryant: 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 in a way that's beneficial to people. But it won't happen.

selimthegrim: Maybe this will finally be the impetus for the US to go for a VAT? Hell if we get a carbon based border adjustment tax out of this like people were talking about in Trump’s first term this might be a case of broken clocks.

shin_lao: Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...

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

rootusrootus: Look how many comments in this discussion are scrambling to support the corruption. It’s very normalized, to the point where we don’t call it corruption any more, we call it good business.

quickthrowman: > Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customerAs someone who prices and sells labor and material for a living, nobody ate increased tariffs. They were passed along to the ultimate consumer of the tariffed product. Everyone was facing the same tariffs so they’re all incentivized to pass the cost along.

JKCalhoun: "Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer cost…"Ha ha, that's a good one. I have yet to hear about reduced profits anywhere. Instead, as I said in another comment, I have actual physical receipts with the additional tariff cost (itemized!) in a pile on my workshop (which I'll never see refunded).

pwg: If the amounts are under the limit you might sue the company who cut those invoices in small claims court for the amounts of the tariff line items on the invoices.The invoices give you slam dunk evidence that you paid that amount in tariffs, and the supreme court decision says the payment was illegally collected, so seems like an easy win for you.

andyfilms1: 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?

coldpie: Yes, you're almost there, just go one step further. Now you've got a big pile of money and no clear rules on where it should go. Who gets to decide where it will go? Given how this administration operates, where do you think it will go?

duxup: 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….

throwaway667555: 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?

magicalhippo: > 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.

jonlucc: 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.

tegiddrone: Yeah, it is an interesting bubble to be in. I worked with a company that could not keep up with the rising SWE salaries and thus attracted a different kind of SWE. I definitely felt the difference in education with the new hires. Reading comprehension/attention was weak. AI will easily replace them, I guess.Finding the data on this would be convenient but its still unclear to me. I'm not a fan of how that article from NU cites its sources loosely, including lazily citing Wikipedia.

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

SpicyLemonZest: [delayed]

benrutter: 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?

downrightmike: Most everything was probably bought with credit/debit cards. The individual records exist. Just using your Amazon etc order history should be dead simple

NickC25: 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

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

danielmarkbruce: 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.

seydor: is it not a conflict of interest if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?

danielmarkbruce: No, it's not a conflict of interest. It's perhaps dumb, or morally bad, or several other things.

JKCalhoun: Such a regressive tax to get behind.Now if tariffs had only been applied to, I don't know, yachts, private jets…

AdamN: I'd go for a more progressive tax if it was on offer. But there is so much debt that I'm pretty worried that taxes are simply unsustainably low.

bluGill: 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.

jtbayly: The Supreme Court already invalidated the tariffs. That’s the context of this order (and the subtitle of the article).

jerf: 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.

SV_BubbleTime: What was the tax rate if you bought things made in the US with US materials?

mindslight: [delayed]

barelysapient: This assumes companies would have refunded consumers.Obviously if a company did this, refunding consumers was the last thing on their mind.

HarHarVeryFunny: Best case consumers may be refunded for tariffs directly charged to them by shipping companies like FedEx and DHL (USPS too, but can you really see them having the competence to do this?!).What consumers will presumably never be refunded for are the increased prices they've been paying for imports of any kind (from Walmart, Amazon, grocery store) where someone else was the importer.

AnimalMuppet: 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.

freetonik: 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.

spamizbad: You don't need a crystal ball to understand a conservative supreme court would require the government to refund what amounts to an illegal tax on American businesses. If you stick your hand into a fire you don't need to speculate as to whether you'll get burned.

whyenot: > We can’t grow bananas here…We can’t? Are south Florida, southern California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, are they not “here”? There is literally a banana variety called California Gold.

pkilgore: Even better "imminent" war with Iran.For 47 years.Imminent.

wutwutwat: That's not how capitalism works. Consumers ate the cost. Have you not bought anything in the last year?

coldpie: 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 got 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’Brienhttps://joeallen-60224.medium.com/big-brown-and-the-fascists...

Jeremy1026: > probablyHah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.

commandlinefan: 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.

stevenwoo: 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.

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

cvoss: 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.

throwaway667555: Congress can act to pay back the economically harmed party, the consumer. They won't because we live in an oligarchy.

llm_nerd: >You're ranting.Sadly I'm not. I'm objectively stating facts. This criminal cabal of spectacularly incompetent clowns is absolutely ransacking the final days of an empire. It is astonishing how Americans are unaware of this.>Many governments, at least the ones that matter, are bankrupt. Quick google shows all G8 countries run a deficit.The US ran a $2.3 trillion dollar deficit over the last 12 months, and spending has gone absolutely wild. At the same time it's handing out massive tax cuts to corporations, and has absolutely no path to get back on track. Quite the opposite, the Trump cabal is basically making it impossible to get back on track. Which is why they're looting everything they can as quickly as they can.>Neither do you.Yes, I know that it was harebrained and literally zero economists with a functioning brain have called it a "smart" play. Only absolute cultists or the most profoundly gullible ever found the arguments by the criminals convincing.Further, as is classic with Trump's lies (that only spectacularly gullible and/or stupid people fall for), he sells every angle of the same play simultaneously. Not only will tariffs eliminate income tax -- a notion that is so mathematically stupid it is instantly dismissible -- simultaneously all of those jobs are going to be repatriated and there will be no imports. These two notions are absolutely at odds -- and both are just utter fantasy nonsense -- but stupid people believe what stupid people do.And yeah, bro, tariffs are not a unique idea. There is no novelty here.

rootusrootus: Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.

thingscoledoes: Source?

philipov: In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging. People who work in finance aren't allowed to trade the same stocks as their company is trading, whether they have any inside info or not. The assumption is that simply by being close to a source of information, you are compromised. The same restrictions should apply to those close to government. By being family, he is compromised by default.

danielmarkbruce: Wrong. People who work in finance (I spent years there) are allowed to trade stocks their company is trading. There is a process to get approval. The equities division at an IB might be trading every single name in the S&P500. If you sit in the investment banking division and that division isn't doing anything related to a name, you are likely to get approval.In this case, the idea that Cantor can't do something because the former head is now in a government job is crazy. No one "in the business" thinks Cantor is suddenly hobbled.

bickfordb: The latest temporary tariffs are also likely illegal.

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

hypeatei: Rich people consume a lot more, so a consumption tax would be ideal if you eased other tax categories like income tax and/or capital gains. It's easy to administer and would boost investment across the economy IMO.

AdamN: I wouldn't ease any taxes - we simply can't afford lower taxes. Debt is nearly $40T (125% of GDP)!

siliconc0w: 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.

myrmidon: Better for whom? Wealthy people?If your argument is that taxation at sale is harder to dogdge than with income, and thus an obviously regressive scheme would still be advantageous for the average American, then I'm not buying it at all.I see no evidence whatsoever that the wealthy would have any more difficulty in dodging sales tax than income/capital gains taxes.

lenerdenator: > In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging.It was damaging.In 2015.And then for a bit between 2021 and 2024.Now it's not again.You have to enforce these sorts of gentlemen's agreements. Just saying "it's damaging" isn't enough to actually make it damaging.

indoordin0saur: Yeah, because he's the son of the commerce secretary, so (supposedly) has access to the internal deliberations within the government.

danielmarkbruce: No, because "the government" isn't one blob. The court system is separate from the administration. And the supreme court justices aren't giving the internal deliberations to someone in the administration, especially when the administration is one of the parties in the case.

mothballed: .... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You think the people appointing them didn't have internal deliberations before they were appointed, including about things Trump had thought about like tariffs? Even FDR knew the 'separation' was a farce, that's how he magically got the court to go along with progressive programs they prior didn't support, after the 'Switch in time that saved nine.'SCOTUS largely functions as a post-facto legitimization machine for those that appoint them. They do not interpret the constitution so much as serve as god-people in funny costumes that provide the cultural message from god that the actions of their political persuasion were legal (or illegal) even in cases where a historical and literal reading of the constitution would otherwise find you with no way to find them legitimate if not for man in black robe say so.

gruez: >if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?Did they know it was illegal? Any more than say, the Biden administration "knew" that forgiving student loans were illegal?

nubinetwork: Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183719

burkaman: He presumably did not have access to the court's opinion before it was released, but he did have access to internal White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced ("Mr. President this is illegal and very likely to be overturned by the courts"), and he obviously had access to the entire federal legal team during the court cases.I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information? It seems the same as a corporate insider dumping stock because a company lawyer privately told them "we're definitely going to lose this case".

gruez: >.... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You think the people appointing them didn't have internal deliberations before they were appointed, including about things Trump had thought about like tariffs?Given that the 2/3 justices appointed by Trump voted against the tariffs, what's the implication here? That Trump deliberately picked anti-tariff justices just so he can engage in a rube goldberg plan to enact tariffs, buy tariff refunds on the cheap, and then have them revoked?

irishcoffee: > 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump.You can blame RBG for one of those. It fascinates me that Biden made the same mistake RBG did, I’ll always wonder how different the would would be if she had stepped down and the democratic party had held a real primary.I don’t like trump, I think he stinks. The democratic party has a few own-goals in this current game.

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

bell-cot: > ...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.

SunshineTheCat: 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-c...

parineum: > .... what? 3 of the justices were nominated by Trump. You think the people appointing them didn't have internal deliberations before they were appointed, including about things Trump had thought about like tariffs?Following that logic, it make sense that those 3 voted with the administration.Oh wait...

mothballed: I don't see how a vote against is a vote against the administration. The whole point here is their corruption machine profited more off the justices voting against the tariff and for refunds. The tariffs were a mechanism to feign a tax for public purpose but then 'refund' them turning it into a tax to private business and Lutnick's financial engineering. Funneling the money straight into corrupt private enterprise via 'refund' is even easier for Trump than having to launder it through public coffers.The key is whether they had insider information given their association with these justices.

nebula8804: >I worked with a company that could not keep up with the rising SWE salaries and thus attracted a different kind of SWE.Maybe im misunderstanding you but I would think that any level of SWE skill would be a minimum amount of competence such that they wouldn't fall for Trumps tricks? SWE is rearranging bits accordance to logic...so you need to know logic no?

rayiner: [delayed]

semiquaver: > 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.

mgkimsal: 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.

zoobab: "use that money to rehire and repay workers"or give it to shareholders.

philipallstar: They only do that after tax, so there'll be more tax paid if they do that.

koolba: How is it extortion? They could have gotten a different deal from anybody else or no deal at all. Nobody was twisting there arm or forcing them to deal with this one company to sell their tariff claims.

krsw: This is basically the government doing a protection racket. I swear, the amount of neoliberals in here lauding the move is a recession indicator. Did we all forget what corruption is?

nekusar: 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.

kowalej: 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.

joshlemer: Prices don’t moronically go up forever, prices come down all the time

SunshineTheCat: 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...

whh: 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.

danielmarkbruce: >> SCOTUS largely functions as a post-facto legitimization machine for those that appoint them. They do not interpret the constitution so much as serve as god-people in funny costumes that provide the cultural message from god that the actions of their political persuasion were legal (or illegal) even in cases where a historical and literal reading of the constitution would otherwise find you with no way to find them legitimate if not for man in black robe say so.You keep changing what you are saying.

insane_dreamer: Technically it might not be "insider trading" since most information (we assume) was public knowledge.But members of the government being able to trade on matters of government policy is exactly how government corruption works. Previous administrations understood this was important to prevent (Carter putting his peanut farm in a blind trust, the Bush's did the same) but now Trump has made clear corruption is just totally fine (why else become president or a government official).

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

dmix: You're saying Trump doesn't want tariffs? And the SCOTUS judges who went on record supporting executive powers to tariff was all just a big insider trading scam? And corporations were willing to risk a hundred of billions in tariffs fees on the odds it might get refunded just because some finance company might get a small cut of refunds?

tt24: That’s not my argument.I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a more regressive tax scheme. Bill Gates and I consume approximately the same amount of resources. I don’t see why he should have to pay a significantly different rate than I do.

titzer: The past 20 years have been an endless series of wealth transfers from commoners to the wealthy. This is Oligarchy.

wpm: 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.

dmix: There was conservative push back in the courts where they supported giving the president powers to tariffs and fearing 'chaos'. It wasn't black and white.

coldpie: > The government knows exactly who paid what in dutiesNo, 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: > 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: 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. 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, 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.

giancarlostoro: > 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.So if I'm the owner of Uncle Billy Bobs Autoparts and I ship from Madeupcountry. I billed you $500 extra for some new car part. The US government refunds me on the tariffs they charged me to import my product to you, and now your taxes is going into my refund. Who wins in this scenario? They're effectively giving every country a free bonus. I wouldn't be surprised if some people got scammed by the tariffs by being overcharged.There's no serious paper trail to any of this to meaningfully return lost revenue to the American consumer, I would rather not waste tax dollars on refunds.I guess the only "winners" are maybe businesses that didn't pass on the revenue loss on to the consumer? But how do you even correctly refund those businesses?

gruez: >I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information?Was the hypothetical "White House advisory memo" produced using any proprietary information? If not, why should it be any different than if I hired a bunch of top lawyers to produce a private report for me?

book_mike: Good. Perhaps the administration should follow the law.

philipallstar: You just refund the people who pay the tariffs. You can't do any more than that.

giancarlostoro: I'm okay with that, though I don't think most of my receipts highlight how much went into a tariff. Maybe for very specific purchases it did, but for most things I've bought over the past year there's no real way to gauge this.

cj: > dumb, or morally badThis is easy to say in hindsight. There was a non-zero chance the decision could have went the other way. Also, companies aren't stupid. They don't buy insurance against things that are impossible.And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100% obviously illegal.

danielmarkbruce: It was non-zero but close to zero.Companies don't want to deal with the headache for many things. It's not a given over what time horizon and how much work is involved to get the refund. It's totally sensible to sell the claim for 70 cents on the dollar for example.The supreme court absolutely hears cases that are obvious. They do it for several reasons - to create clarity, to narrow scope, to set a very clear precedent, and other reasons.

rayiner: It wasn’t “close to zero.” The Supreme Court split 6-3, with two Trump appointees voting against him. And the Federal Circuit, which is the most boring appellate court and not political at all, split 7-4, with two democratic appointees and two republican appointees voting to uphold the tariffs.This was a case that split both the liberal and conservative blocs. Obama’s former SG, Neal Katyal, went up there and argued for limiting presidential power over the economy. One of the justices quipped about the irony of Katyal’s major contribution to jurisprudence being revitalization of non-delegation doctrine, which has always been a conservative focus.

danielmarkbruce: Did you read the case? Read Clarence Thomas's dissent. It's not clear if he actually thinks what he wrote, or he just voted that way so he could write a dissent and make a strange legal point which probably doesn't carry water but sort of maybe could one day maybe.If it were close, I think he would have voted the other way. The folks on the court appear extremely inclined to take the other side on things just as a mental exercise.It was close to zero.

tegiddrone: Oh, I WISH that was the case but I'd estimate only 10% of SWE would fit your model of minimum competence... and yeah a lot of that 10% are browsing HN. I recall in 2016 asking coworkers why they voted trump. "My 401k" was a frequent answer.Vibe coding existed long before AI, especially in web/startup/enterprise information systems. You don't need to be a critical thinker to make a successful RoR app.

jmward01: 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.

redeeman: every single so called "nation state" is in reality just a regime, they ALL do this. They are no different than the mafia. You can choose between so called "don socialist" and "don fiscally-resonsible", yet they are identical twins with a different haircut.No organisations or regime has ever considered itself illegitimate. The big guys consider smaller guys legitimate or illegitimate, but its just ink on a page.Finland (and _ALL_ other countries) is an illegitimate regime, collecting its protection money, telling you to pray it does not alter the deal any further

ajam1507: "I didn't kill him, officer. It was the bullet."

hammock: Source? I have seen 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-...

podgietaru: 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.

phil21: 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.

reactordev: [delayed]

hypercube33: 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.

dweinus: 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!

giancarlostoro: 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.

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

jlarocco: They didn't have to rule on it because there's already precedent that the tariffs have to be repaid.

beeforpork: > while, of course, consumers get nothingThis would have been the case no mattern what.

aw1621107: > As sibling says, the Court very definitely did not order them to refund anything.> You may see other judges rule that the refunds don't have to be paid, for any of several reasons.I think the government might have a bit of an uphill battle given arguments they have previously made to courts. For example, consider this decision from the US Court of International Trade from 2025-12 [0]:> However, as the Government notes in its response to Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction here, it “[has] made very clear—both in this case and in related cases—that [it] will not object to the [c]ourt ordering reliquidation of plaintiffs’ entries subject to the challenged IEEPA duties if such duties are found to be unlawful.”> <snip>> Judicial estoppel would prevent the Government from taking an inconsistent approach after a final result in V.O.S. [] The Government has emphasized this point itself, citing to Sumecht NA, Inc. v. United States, which holds that “the Government would be judicially estopped from taking a contrary position” regarding a prior representation involving the availability of relief in the form of reliquidation. [] Having convinced this court to accept that importers who paid IEEPA tariffs will be able to receive refunds after reliquidation, and having benefited from the court’s subsequent conclusion that importers will not experience irreparable harm as a consequence of liquidation, the Government cannot later “assume a contrary position” to argue that refunds are not available after liquidation.> <snip>> Additionally, the panel in In re Section 301 Cases unanimously agreed—as we do now—that the USCIT has “the explicit power to order reliquidation and refunds where the government has unlawfully exacted duties.” [] The Government acknowledges that “a decision [to the contrary] would be inconsistent with years of [the court’s] precedent.”Obviously all this doesn't prevent the government from appealing anyways, but they'll need to get creative to get around their previous representations.[0]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cit.uscourts.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;cit&#x2F;files&#x2F;25-154.pdf

softwaredoug: 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.

Supermancho: To clarify, POTUS being short for the group POTUS in-crowd of the actual POTUS and cabinet, who act in sync.I'm saying the public tide shifted and the legal reality set in that they weren't going to get sympathetic rulings...which they don't care about anyway since it's not their money and the tariff threats already had any desired effects sought.POTUS was floated the idea that they could enrich themselves, so the decision was made, communicated to the Secretary of Commerce and to the SCOTUS judges.

trymas: 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2025_United_States_federal_bud...

satvikpendem: "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:&#x2F;&#x2F;sg.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;trump-brags-oval-office-billionair...

petcat: You're saying that he had access to all of the Supreme Court Justices' chambers?

indoordin0saur: You don't need to have access to everything for it to be insider trading, just more than the general public. Lutnick would know what case they are making to the court, perhaps the confidence of the attorneys in winning as well as information on how the case was going.

tacticalturtle: Supreme Court transcripts of arguments are posted to supreme court.gov the same day the arguments are made:https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&#x2F;oral_arguments&#x2F;argument_transcr...There’s no secret sauce here - their guess as to how the case is going is as good as any outside observer, and based on the questions made by the justices.

superxpro12: 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???

mrwh: 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.

tencentshill: Worse. They tend to stick around due to their inability to stop taking until they die.

snarf21: It is almost as if this was a planned wealth transfer that was immensely succesful.

microtonal: 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.

nyeah: [delayed]

NetMageSCW: Trump doesn’t have those powers.

smm11: So we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?

PaulDavisThe1st: They weren't buying insurance. There's no insurance payout for the companies. They got a small amount of money in hand, and lost the chance to reclaim any of the tariff refund. That isn't insurance.

behringer: Yeah it's not insider trading. It's just that someone on the inside engaged in trade... Cmon guys you know there's a difference!

NetMageSCW: What evidence do you have that those tariffs were proposed by him?

recursivedoubts: in other news:https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newrepublic.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;206882&#x2F;trump-commerce-secretary...

happyopossum: Also in other news:"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:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newsweek.com&#x2F;howard-lutnick-sons-may-make-money-...

NetMageSCW: 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.

anon7000: They literally spent a decent chunk of money spinning up a line of business that could only make money if the tariffs were illegal.

hammock: So insurance is bad now

PaulDavisThe1st: Insurance company deal: if you pay us $X now, and then Y happens, we will make you whole, even though that cost may very well exceed $X.Lutnick deal: we pay you $X' now, and if Y' happens, we collect everything which will substantively exceed $X'.This is not insurance, its closer to shorting stocks.Oh, one other thing: the insurance company has essentially nothing to do with Y at all, in the sense that they have no control over Y and generally speaking no involvement in it (think: accidents, floods, storms, fires). By contrast Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce of the United States of America.

jcranmer: > And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100% obviously illegal.There is an argument in about two months' time as to whether or not the Birthright Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment actually guarantees birthright citizenship in the US. There is no serious legal argument in favor of the interpretation being advanced by the Trump administration, that it does not. And yet here we are.

yapyap: 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