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-con...
Hah, we are 100% not getting our money back. And the higher, tariff level, prices aren't going to go back down either.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is...
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."
(To some extent, this was to facilitate tariff fraud. As an American business buying abroad, your foreign supplier would take over responsibility for importing into the US, and then you could pretend you were unaware it was fraudulently undervaluing its imports to lower effective tariffs paid. Any possible consequences for the foreign entity getting caught doing fraud are minimal.)
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?
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.
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...
Or Tax Foundation? https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs...
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/
[2] https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-june-17...
[3] https://www.edelmanfinancialengines.com/education/life-event...
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.
Don't hold your breath for either to be given back.
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....
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.
No, Section 122 tariffs have never been used prior to Trump turning to them after the Supreme Court decision striking down the IEEPA tariffs, and, the states suing the Administration argue, the explicit sole statutory purpose for which they were allowed in the 1974 law creating the power can only possible to exist under a fixed-exchange-rate monetary system, which the US has not had since 1976.
Whereas in these cases the government is potentially harming the entire public every single day that the courts don't act.
They sure took their time with this one.
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.
Every company that collected a tariff fee needs to refund it as they collect their own refunds.
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.
I agree about parliamentary systems being better, but they are still vulnerable. It doesn't matter if the electorate is in favor of strongman.
This is good: we live in objectively good times and safe/wealthy countries where problems are relatively minor and we should focus on debating and compromising, not having know-it-all unbounded captains.
Our first focus is risk management: not having systems that make it easy for the Putin/Erdogan and Trump-like individual to ruin everything.
In general, there is no silver bullet, and as Solon (creator of the first constitution in the Antiquity) put it, each country will need a custom regime to fit its specific culture and society.
But the foreign policy is where the president's authority is outsized. So that's why Trump is so focused on it, it's one of the few areas that he can directly control.
But that doesn't describe the US right now. The problem is that the GOP is providing at least enough support to enable the behavior that we currently see. If congress as a whole wanted to stop things they could.
I actually quite like the US system but the combination of first past the post voting and party politics appear increasingly likely to strangle us.
Several framers of the constitution expressed deep concerns about the potential for coordinated non-governmental "factions" taking over government via elections.
Unfortunately, despite going to great efforts to limit power centralization internally, concerns of external centralization were not heeded and there are no limits on the coordination of the US government via non-governmental organizations such as parties.
This might have been a prophesy:
> Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.
> It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
> [Omitted here, but at this point he worries that even a foreign country could weaponize a party to take control of the country, via elections.]
> There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true, and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with layout, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.
-- George Washington [0]
States used to operate independently enough that the same party in different counties and states might have varied views. But today, both parties have become highly centralized and homogenous from local to federal levels. Now intensely centralized themselves, they are well prepared to each compete to centralize government as an extension of a single party.
And given it has become relatively easy to do so, the incentives are now there for parties to treat elections as war, and party control of government as the highest priority policy at all times. Incentives don't mean it has to happen, but ... well we know how that goes.
The winner take all elements, where a party that gains a power edge over the other is in a better position to entrench themselves further, if not permanently, are also in play.
When competition for power devolves into a dichotomy of complete wins or losses, the most powerful decision makers spend their time continually competing, with little attention left for concerns about competent governance or the public's well being.
The current state of the unchecked US party system is the number one problem for the country. As all other problems migrate downstream from it.
The biggest problem isn't "which" party gains control. The problem is that any party could ever obtain majority control in all three branches.
Now the government says they can’t refund because the amount of money is too big and they already spent it.
Now we the people probably don’t get our money back….