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?

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?

> 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?

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

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.

Agreed; only the edge importer can be refunded by the government. Hopefully those businesses pass on the refund, but that's up to them.

> 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?

Gee, I don't know, receipts ?

Also simply revenue on the business end

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.

"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).

> 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).

You could ask for a tariff refund from those suppliers.

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.

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

> Since the cost was probably split between reduced profit and additional customer

As 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, line iteming the tariffs on the invoice would make it abundantly clear. I passed along all increased costs with a note on my proposal that said “Any and all additional tariffs will be paid for by the customer.”

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

Yeah. You're confusing capitalism and how businesses generally work with this particular tariff. Which, based on these comments, was often/always just passed through to customers.

That's what I just said

I know you're being cute, but businesses generally don't pass all the costs of increased COGS on to customers.

Not being cute, being a realist who exists in this world, so take your condescending nickname and go read up on tariffs, will ya, babe.

The Bottom Line: While the goal of a tariff is often to protect domestic industry, the immediate effect is almost always a "consumption tax" paid by the person at the end of the line: you.

So you're backtracking and now are saying that that's how tariffs work; not how capitalism works? Got it.

Pretty sure we are talking about the effect of tariffs in our capitalist economy. Glad you got it.

Be less sure and try to use your words better since you don't seem to understand the difference between:

> That's not how capitalism works.

and

That's not how tariffs work in a capitalist economy.

Dude, I said that's not how capitalism works because you claimed the tariff costs didn't get passed down to us consumers, which it did.

I then said that's not how tariffs work in a capitalist economy when you claimed consumers didn't get the costs passed down to them, which again, it sure as shit did.

I've said one single thing this entire time. The costs of these tariffs are paid for by me, you, and every other consumer, not the businesses, because capitalism, profits, shareholder value, ceo pay packages, whatever.

I've just had to say that one thing multiple different ways as you try to mental ninja me for no reason about facts. I don't care what you think, the Fact is, consumers eat the cost of tariffs with higher prices, which look around, is happening.

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.

You're thinking way too much like a programmer

It doesn't need to be a perfect solution, you could just give everyone a flat refund similar to class action payouts.

Well that would seem like a potentially huge mess depending on the size of the purchases. Not to mention that the purchasers are not all easily tracked down. I wasn't suggesting it because it was perfect; I was suggesting it because it might be viable.

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.

It's COVID PPP all over again... Expect more asset inflation.

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

I 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.

> 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.

I didn't have to deal with it, but from other comments, most of the international shippers also charged a hefty fee to broker the tarrifs. Expect not to get that refunded.

Yet another successful Republican transfer of wealth from the people who do the work (employees) to the people who don't (owners).

that was the plan all along

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

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

Agree. But a few sure scrambled when they read the tea leaves and saw a chance to profit by it.

they are everything except incompetent when it comes to massively looting us and profiting.

Tax to businesses? You think the costs were only passed down once? Really?

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

No, THE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT DEMOCRATS.

Christ on a bike,