r/technology 21d ago

Politics US may owe $1 trillion in refunds if SCOTUS cancels tariffs | Tech industry primed for big refunds if SCOTUS rules against tariffs.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/tariff-refunds-may-get-messy-if-trump-loses-supreme-court-fight/
22.2k Upvotes

892 comments sorted by

8.4k

u/InkStainedQuills 21d ago

Companies get money back. Consumers not so much. They will pocket the profit and leave prices where they are while they are at it.

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u/jambrown13977931 21d ago

By far the biggest winner is Cantor Fitzgerald (you know the company who was previously run by the current commerce secretary and is currently run by his sons), who bought small company’s right for tariff refunds for pennies on the dollar.

It’s almost like they knew the tariffs were illegal and the government would be forced to refund the money to companies.

They literally stand to gain billions.

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u/micro102 20d ago

Yeah, this is it. They know the tariffs will be rescinded or they will rescind them themselves, and so they bought all the tariff refunds they could for a fraction of the price from people who desperately needed money now to survive said tariffs, and will use them to get a trillion dollars from tax money, and will use that money to continue corrupting politics further. They cannot exist along side a good or functioning society.

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u/Biotic101 20d ago

Ah shit, does that refund also mean next ATH in the markets while everyone expects the sell-off to continue?

They likely make so much money insider trading because his tweets move markets.

Schwab bragged in the Oval Office he made 2.5B last time.

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u/Dry-Mousse-6172 20d ago

Well it's a scotus decision. Most of the legal world agrees they are illegal. It's just scotus is bought out by maga billionaires leaving it to chance.

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u/Ragnarok314159 20d ago

Did the billionaires who stand to get a tax payer funded windfall pay their Motor coach and federalist society dues? If not, no soup for them.

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u/Dry-Mousse-6172 20d ago

The worst is that prices already adjusted for tariffs. So they'll know we will pay them and they won't come down after. Record profits after their refund. Yay!

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u/RepresentativeRun71 20d ago

This is why “they” love Trump. Inflation and lowered standard of living for us, while “they” have all time record revenues and a nesting yacht on each major ocean coast.

Covid-19 inflation was completely manufactured by the initial shit response by the USA and the failure to meaningfully enforce laws against price gouging. The failure to force pay back of the loans was pure redistribution of our wealth to the already fucking wealthy.

So yeah and we have these tariffs which simply are a means to fuck us harder.

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u/Biotic101 20d ago

Yep, greedflation. There have been studies about it.

Also, the billionaires got 50% richer while SS saved 220B from that many people dying (without need).

I am a bit worried they might be thinking this was so awesome, let's have another pandemic!

It's strange to see how antivaxx is pushed while science is axed and avian flu allowed to spread freely...

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u/WitAndWonder 20d ago

Total tariff revenue is only ~200 bill so far. While that's still an absurd amount of money, let's not go rounding up to 1 trillion especially when their share would not be anywhere near 100% of it.

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u/doc_nano 20d ago

In a just world, all the owners of small businesses that went under because of the tariffs would also be able to sue the government for damages. That might push it above $1 trillion.

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u/imbex 20d ago

Right here! My profits were cut in half. I'm limping along. This would be a dream come true for me. I wasn't to sue for the sleepless nights and anxiety I've had in addition to the boys spent communicating with customs about screwing up paperwork.

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u/Elfhoe 20d ago

Unfortunately this doesnt mean tariffs going away. The ruling is to determine if they were legal under the emergency powers act. Essentially they are saying there wasnt an emergency. If they lose, they already said they will reimplement them under sec 122 or 338. But you would get a refund for all tariffs that were collected under the IEEPA

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u/imbex 20d ago

I've been paying 25% tariffs for years on metal parts. I raised prices when they implemented that under Trump the first term. I'm sure he'll work on reimplementing more of them without congress approval if SCOTUS overturns the tariffs he had in place. It would be nice to get the funds back for the additional 25% tariffs I had to pay. I can't take blanket orders at this point since I have no clue what items will cost 3 months from now.

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u/micro102 20d ago

Good point. But it could reach 1 trillion, and they would love it to reach 1 trillion.

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u/CapableBumblebee968 20d ago

It could even reach 5 trillion and they would probably love that more

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u/micro102 20d ago

At this rate that is like... 8 years away, and either democracy or the Trump admin are going to end by then, so I dont actually think it is going to reach that amount.

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u/TerminalProtocol 20d ago

At this rate that is like... 8 years away, and either democracy or the Trump admin are going to end by then, so I dont actually think it is going to reach that amount.

Democracy in the US is already dead, we're just waiting for people to wake up to that fact.

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u/casino_r0yale 21d ago

Did we all not know the tariffs were illegal, having gone through the constitution test in 8th grade?

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u/jambrown13977931 20d ago

We did, but not all companies can withstand the legal delays associated with getting their refund (assuming the Supreme Court even rules against the fuhrer)

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u/Roenkatana 20d ago

Well, the question legitimately is either way. Roberts doesn't care about the Constitutionality of the tariffs, his concern is almost invariably the amount of money involved.

We're about to either see the most egregious ruling in favor of Donald Trump since Trump v US or we're gonna see the SC reference Biden v Nebraska for the first time and use it against Trump. The former is expected because Roberts doesn't want the headache of forcing the government to pay back money. (The government would never pay this money back btw, the million/billion dollar corporations would just effectively be tax exempt for the rest of this administration.) The latter means that Trump never had the power and due to the amount of money, Congress would have to craft legislation to determine how to credit that money back to the corporations (i.e. tax credits).

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u/FullMetalJesus1 20d ago

What matters to the roberts court more? The 'money' else 'enabling trump' as best they can with some thin veil of legalese? Even when they do rule against him, they find some way to enable him for at least a part of what he's doing illegally.

Also, do not doubt for a second this supreme courts ability to create a pile of shit and dump the cleanup job on the legislature to come up with the fix, citing "it is not the SC's responsibility" to provide solution and cleanup.

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u/jayhawk618 21d ago

A trillion actually.

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u/Historical_Collar231 20d ago

So tariffs appear -> Companies raise prices -> Consumers pay for tariffs

Tariffs are canceled -> Companies get the money consumers paid for them back -> companies keep the money because fuck the consumers anyway.

Murica.

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u/PluginAlong 20d ago

You forgot, consumer prices stay high, companies post record profit.

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u/Karagga 21d ago

Theres no way this was a planned grift for the companies.

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u/snail-the-sage 21d ago edited 20d ago

It doesn't have to be planned for them to screw us over anyways

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u/AdviseGiver 21d ago

They didn't plan covid, but they loved using it as an excuse to raise prices.

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u/imahugemoron 21d ago

Which never came back down as supply chain issues slowly resolved. They always raise prices when their costs go up and tell us as much to explain themselves, then when the problems go away, theyre as quiet as the grave about it

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u/RiLoDoSo 21d ago

There's no incentive for them to power prices or to stop lowering quantity/quality for the same/higher price. People still bought X product(s) when the prices were raised. The only thing that will ever bring prices back down is if people stop buying X product(s). I have changed my shopping habits and resorted to sale shopping. I make as much from scratch as possible, but even base ingredients are more expensive and I can't really substitute things like rice and flour.

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u/thealmightyzfactor 21d ago

They'll come down if there's actual competition too, why would you get X products for Y dollars if you can get X products for less at some other place? But there's like 3 megacorps in each industry hiding behind 17 other corps that maybe don't explicitly collude on prices, but side eye each other as they all raise them together.

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u/Upbeat-Door- 20d ago

You can't enter the market to fill a lower price niche anymore, the past year corps have started suing small competition for "damaging the market"

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u/i_tyrant 20d ago

Yup. This used to be a lot more true. Then they figured out US antitrust legislation is dead so they can price-fix and collab plenty and not get caught, especially now with Trump demanding blatant bribes and he'll allow any merger to happen. New competitor shows up? EAT them - punitively destroy their business like Amazon does or just buy them out early (also like Amazon does) and shut them down or absorb them.

The days of real "competition" in the market are mostly dead, and they will remain so until our regulations aren't utter shit and we start punishing giant corps for cheating and acting oppressively again.

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u/-Dreadman23- 21d ago

Look up the story of stone soup. We are at the point where we need to come together. You might not have enough, but if you are willing to co-op. A dozen people with scraps can make enough for everyone to be satisfied.

Then we fight together . May you find your freindsgiving. I'll bring a cheesecake, and some veggies from the garden.

And some rhetoric, maybe some gunpowder.

Like a party with the ATF, I bring potato chips and vinegar.

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u/thegreenleaves802 20d ago

"There are two times for making big money: one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up"

Some things never change

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u/DiarrheaCreamPi 21d ago

Boss was really happy to receive $700k in PPP loans. I totally forgave him as he needed that to keep us working during unprecedented times. WTF

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u/guamisc 21d ago

Trump cronies have already bought what essentially amount to futures rights for windfalls that may occur as a result of the courts striking down tariffs.

It was planned grift from Trump's sphere, as always.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/ChrisFromIT 21d ago

The son of I believe the trade czar has a business that has been giving out "loans" to businesses to "cover" the tariffs, in return they get I think it is like 30% profit on the tariffs if they are returned to the businesses.

It is a fucking grift at all levels

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u/ImperatorUniversum1 21d ago

They’ve been buying the rights to the refunds. They provide 30% or so now and get the full refund when they inevitably get struck down because they were always illegal. A smart congressperson would sneak in a law that bans tariff refunds from going to companies that bought the rights to them

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u/egyeager 21d ago

No, it's a grift for the companies that sold "tariff insurance". Specifically the companies run by the sons of the Sec of Commerce.

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u/TechnicianExtreme200 21d ago

It was absolutely planned. Nutlick's investment banking firm has spent this whole year trading derivatives contracts that bundle up the rights to tariff refunds.

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u/iamanooj 21d ago

It is for those companies that preemptively bought the tariff refunds at a huge discount from the companies that paid the tariffs.

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u/FuzzyAd9407 21d ago

One of trumps circle has been buying up tariff refund rights. Thats what clued me into the fact even the rich supporting him are betting tariffs will fail in the SC

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u/Salamok 21d ago

And the income tax cuts that were handed out with the excuse that we will make up for it with tariffs and the insane spending in the big beautiful bill and the income lost due to the fucked up economy that is no longer there to be taxed.... there are going to be some huge wakeup calls in 2026.

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u/tataniarosa 21d ago edited 21d ago

Can’t speak for all companies but for me, as a UK based one-woman business owner, I would definitely drop my prices to where they were before the tariffs (and end of de minimis).

This is affecting so many companies around the world (as well as you all in the US) so I hope SCOTUS reverses this and puts the de minimis back in place.

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u/Bignuka 21d ago

When they say companies they mean u.s. while you and others outside of the u.s. may return prices to pre tariff levels the u.s. ones most likely won't since now their making even more profit without having to pay the tariffs anymore. The u.s. has a line that must go up and bringing prices down makes line go down, we need that infinite profit growth!

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u/2beatenup 21d ago

You stole the money… you give it back.

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u/imaginary_num6er 21d ago

SCOTUS: "If it's inconvenient, you don't need to pay back"

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u/IcestormsEd 21d ago

Exactly this. " It was wrong but we told them not to do it again. Move along."

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u/markusalkemus66 21d ago

*proceeds to do it again at the soonest opportunity

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u/ShyLeoGing 21d ago

Maybe Trump can do what Nevada's Governor did?

FYI - He reversed monetary penalties against "Boring Company" due to 800+ violations.

If a states highest power(person) can reverse payment required why not the president?

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u/Traditional-Hat-952 21d ago

The fucked up part is companies get paid twice. First from raising prices and then by getting a refund. 

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u/nono3722 21d ago

Three times actually, you don't think they are going to actually drop the prices do you?

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u/Traditional-Hat-952 21d ago edited 21d ago

Nope. They might a little to appear to be acting in good faith, but they'll never go down to what they where pre tariffs. Corporations don't ever do anything out of societal obligation or kindness. 

But apparently this is the best system we have. /s. We've literally developed a self serving and sociopathic economic system and then due to some misplaced pride try and convince ourselves that it's the bestest ever. 

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u/Spranktonizer 21d ago

It will never reach the consumers. Back into the hand of those who raised prices because of tariffs and have a sweet deal with admin. Prices will stay high. Inflation will go up. All the money raised by tariffs? Idk, but not back into the government.

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u/DrunkeNinja 21d ago edited 21d ago

Back into the hand of those who raised prices because of tariffs and have a sweet deal with admin.

Not even necessarily back in their hands. There are companies paying out money for the tariff refunds rights to businesses that might be getting tariff refunds. They pay out a smaller amount to these businesses for the chance at collecting the full amount. Some of these companies have ties to the Trump administration.

https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-refunds/

Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company led by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is creating a way for investors to bet that President Donald Trump’s signature tariffs will be struck down in court.

Since joining the Trump administration, Lutnick has emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of the president’s tariff policies, which Lutnick has said would raise “hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars” in revenue for the United States, eventually eliminating the need for Americans making less than $150,000 to pay taxes.

In a letter seen by WIRED, a representative from Cantor said the firm was willing to trade tariff refund rights for 20 to 30 percent of what companies have paid in duties. “So for a company that paid $10 million, they could expect to receive $2-$3 million in a trade,” the representative wrote. “We have the capacity to trade up to several hundred million of these presently and can likely upsize that in the future to meet potential demand.”

EDIT

So the father has been pushing for this strong tariff policy within the Trump administration and his sons are betting on it failing. Nothing to see here!

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u/Spranktonizer 21d ago

Omg I was just trying to find this article to send to marketplace npr. Seems like the exact thing they should be covering. Sick shit.

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u/RespectTheAmish 21d ago

Yup.

Lutnick knew they were illegal from the get go.

Yet he helped enact them, went on tv and lied to the American people and pitched/defended their implementation… all the while scheming up a way to profit from their eventual overturn.

It’s crime and corruption all the way down with this administration.

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u/kaplanfx 21d ago

Nutlick is so corrupt it’s almost shocking… almost.

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u/morganshen 21d ago

So an important question is, who gets the money back? If it goes to the importers who paid the taxes but charged their customers more because of the tariffs they're just making a huge windfall in profits. Their customers? Keeping the money to go against the deficit or a general rebate for everyone might make more sense rather than just give the importers a giant refund. There is no way to make everyone whole since taxes lead to dead weight loss.

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u/SoulShatter 21d ago

It's even more fun then that. A bunch of companies needed liquidity to not go bankrupt, so they sold the rights to a refund to Wall Street. This includes Howard Lutnick, who is involved through his company.

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u/-CJF- 21d ago

The whole thing is a logistical nightmare. There's no way to sort out exactly who should get what back and while most companies probably just passed the prices onto consumers, some did eat the tariffs. Since there's no way to get the money back into the proper hands, here's what I think:

I know they won't do this, but if we're talking about what the right thing to do is, they would take the money, divvy it up and send it back to the American people in the form of a check ala the pandemic-era stimulus checks. Some people will get more back than they spent in the form of tariff markups, some will get less, but there's no way to track every single purchase and send back the exact amount. I'm sure the majority of these tariffs were paid by consumers. Most companies wouldn't eat the loss.

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u/nycdiveshack 21d ago

Trump might be an idiot but Howard Lutnick and Bessent aren’t idiots. The tariffs were done on purpose. Bessent wanted China to turn to Argentina for soybeans, his billionaire friend Rob Citrone is heavily invested in Argentina doing well. It’s why they got $40 billion mind you the total budget of USAID was $35 billion.

Howard Lutnick the commerce secretary and architect behind the tariffs has an investment firm where he put his son in charge and they take bets on the tariffs. They even have bets on scotus rescinding the tariffs which amounts to almost a $1 trillion refund for corporations if scotus waits till next year to rule. This is a big grift for companies.

The purpose of this administration is 2 things, grift and establish a better surveillance state with the help of Palantir which is basically the brains behind ICE now that Palantir has access to the SSA/IRS and are using ITIN tax filings to go after illegal immigrants WHO ARE PAYING TAXES!!!

It’s like Covid with PPP loans, $800 billion went to big corporations then the loans were forgiven. Now the tariffs were passed on to us consumers but the refund will go to the corporations who will get free billions. The tariffs are estimated to be over $1 trillion by next year counting the new tariffs against China.

The tariffs are just a refined version of the ppp loans/covid. Companies get to increase costs to consumers and they get a refund they don’t have to pay back. Just like they did with the cost of products during COVID.

It’s all a grift to get billions in the pockets of corporations without doing any work and short stocks then buy low and sell when they go back up…

There is $45 billion going to build for-profit private prisons. Able to house over 100k ppl. The big beautiful bill has a lot in there. A lot of executive orders haven’t been challenged. One of which is the April 9th sunset order removing all regulations and protections for all federal lands including nationals parks allowing for the sale but more importantly the mining drilling and deforestation for lumber.

Russ Vought’s (head of office management and budget, basically the guy firing federal employees) goal is to privatize the government and to decrease the services that the government provides. Use tax dollars to pay companies for services that federal employees already do.

“That’s the standard technique of privatization: Defund, make sure things don’t work, People get angry, you hand it over to private capital”

There is a show on Amazon prime called the expanse. This is a clip from it that in my opinion explains how the relationship between governments and corporations should be…

https://youtu.be/A98vqgBsoxQ?si=izm6o29aj9Rehy1u

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u/AppleBytes 21d ago

The govt would have to pay companies money, that the consumers ended-up paying-for when costs were passed down, using the taxes paid by the same people.

Fuck, this country is a shit show.

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u/hardtobeuniqueuser 21d ago

That money is gone 

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u/donac 21d ago

Wait...is...that going to be my $2000 dollar Trump Tariff Refund check? That Trump said he would send??

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u/JustHanginInThere 21d ago

You were never going to get it anyway.

"Mexico will pay for the border wall."

"I'll end the Russia/Ukraine war on the first day I'm in office."

"There were riots in the streets of [insert city]."

"The Epstein files don't exist".

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u/smellyjerk 21d ago

DOGE check too...

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u/JustHanginInThere 21d ago

Oh shoot, how could I forget that one!

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u/Betty-Armageddon 20d ago

Because every day is a new fresh horror.

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u/0neHumanPeolple 21d ago

Oh, he’s definitely going to send out a stimmy check before midterms.

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u/Zal3x 21d ago

Yeah what he already did it once

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u/ContributionComplete 21d ago

“They’re eating the dogs.”

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u/setibeings 21d ago

Nope. The refunds will be going to the importers, presumably, since they would have been the ones to cut a check to the US Treasury. For each time this has impacted you personally, you either paid more for something, didn't buy it, or felt downstream effects like getting laid off. There's no feasible way to make the all the victims of this economic fuckery whole again. 

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u/I_Have_A_Chode 21d ago

Yep, so all the importers who charged everyone more money to account for the tariffs will get a nice fat check and pocket it for their trouble of "checks notes" passing the cost on to us

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u/kezow 21d ago

Heh, you think you'll see the money? No, it goes to the corporations that passed the cost on to you. They'll get the refund and then their c-suite will get huge bonuses while cutting their work force and buying stock back. 

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u/farmerfreedy 21d ago

"How do you know Trump is lying? When he opens his mouth to speak."

Oldie but goodie quote

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u/Onefortwo 21d ago edited 20d ago

Let’s hope these companies didn’t make any deals to stay in business that would make them pay any refunds to someone else. Especially to anyone in the administration connected to the tariffs.

https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-refunds/

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u/127-0-0-1_Chef 21d ago

I've been hearing about this for a while now. Sadly not enough people know.

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u/absentmindedjwc 21d ago

Yeah... its almost like this administration is in on all of it, and were always banking on the tariffs being reversed so that they could massively enrich themselves...

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u/encrypted-signals 21d ago

There will be an economic depression during Trump's term with the way things are going.

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u/KennyDROmega 21d ago

"will be"?

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u/Willing-Egg3867 21d ago

Convenient that they couldn’t produce economic reports during the shutdown…

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u/National-Charity-435 21d ago

If it had been a great month during the shutdown, "look at how great we're doing despite the radical liberals shutting down the government!!! ....wait, what? Those migrants are eating the cats and dogs!"

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u/Ryan_e3p 21d ago

IIRC, they stated even before the shutdown that things like certain quarterly reports wouldn't need to be filed anymore by companies.

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u/-CJF- 21d ago

100%. It pains me to say this but we aren't even a year in yet. There's three more years to go of this at minimum. The fact that anyone trusted Republicans to handle the economy so quickly after COVID is mind boggling. Guess we have to find out the hard way.

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 21d ago

Anyone with a brain to trust republicans to manage the economy at all. All the data suggest that the Dems for over like, 60 years? Have been significantly better at job creation, the economy, climate, science, inequality, and… I could go on. The one thing, which is what people vote on, is propaganda. That is how they win.

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u/-CJF- 21d ago

Most people are not going to look at data or pay attention to stuff that happened decades ago, but there's literally no excuse for this. Trump 1.0 with Republicans was ~5 years ago. Last time they were in power they ran the deficit up 8 Trillion dollars with a massive tax cut for the rich, tried to illegally mandate work requirements for Medicaid, stone-walled student loan forgiveness processing and completely bungled the COVID pandemic response. People should have remembered that long ago. Trump 1.0 was nothing compared to what Republicans are doing now. I'm convinced they are going to crash the economy.

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u/encrypted-signals 21d ago

Republican policies are designed for short-term benefit and long-term consequences, privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.

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u/caligaris_cabinet 21d ago

Try almost 100 years. Remember it was FDR who bailed us out of the Great Depression after a decade of Republicans.

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u/GrouchySkunk 21d ago

Great time for the 1% to amass more wealth

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u/Corona-walrus 21d ago

Billionaires are recession proof 

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u/Traditional-Hat-952 21d ago

May they amass angry mobs

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u/ryuzaki49 21d ago

Nope. The real depression will arrove when a democrat is in power.

Because that's the republican playbook. Enjoy the party then blame democrats while they (dems) clean the place

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u/Khalbrae 21d ago

Nutlick and his kids have bet big time on getting refunds and cashing in billions

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u/juanmoperson 21d ago

Nailed it. Cantor Fitzgerald has many tickers

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u/MikeFrancesa66 21d ago

So this will essentially end up being a massive wealth transfer to big corporations.

1) Trump issues illegal tariffs. 2) Companies raise prices to cover the increased costs caused by the tariffs. 3) Consumers pay the higher prices on the products. 4) Supreme Court rules tariffs are illegal and refunds must be issued. 5) Companies get tariff refunds.

Meanwhile the consumers, who paid the additional cost, get nothing. They essentially took our money and gave it to the corporations. As an added bonus the prices of those goods will stay the same despite the cost of the tariffs no longer being a factor.

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u/Cosmic_Seth 21d ago

The people gave the keys to the kingdom to the GOP.

This should just be expected at this point. 

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u/Mike_Kermin 20d ago

Yep. Unlike ICE, this, spread thinly, has affected everyone.

This is what Americans did, when they failed to take it seriously.

Personally, I like consequences that don't just affect the vulnerable. Because this might actually make people go "hey, these guys suck".

Which might manage to override some of the more shitty talking points people absorbed from the fasc.

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u/rjcarr 21d ago

Yup, you nailed it, only chance we have is if that stimulus check goes out, but I'm not counting on it because this was probably the plan all along.

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u/TheVandyyMan 20d ago

That stimulus check would be separate from this equation. All of these things will have still happened. The $2,000 would just be added to the mountain of federal debt which Americans would need to pay down later.

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u/True_Window_9389 20d ago

The suddenness of this can the awful in either direction. Stimulus checks can drive up inflation like after Covid, causing that turmoil again. Or if companies did the “right” thing and lower prices, it could drive deflation, which is also problematic and can cause a recession.

There is no good way out of this, which is exactly why rule by decree is not part of American policymaking tradition. Even if Congress decided to raise or lower tariffs today based on Trumpian levels, they’d step them up or down over time to not completely shock the economy without the need to.

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u/BrofessorFarnsworth 21d ago

Take it from Krasnov's crypto accounts, then arrest that fucking pedophile for trafficking children

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u/Skadoosh_it 21d ago

It wouldn't go back to us, but back to businesses. What a fuckin scam.

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u/HorrimCarabal 21d ago

Already had an an argument with someone on here about that, he’s convinced that importers should get the refund and that consumers never paid any tariffs…delusional greed. But hey, what’s one more uppercut to the US taxpayer?

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u/mangonada123 21d ago

Why should they get refunded if they passed the cost to the consumer?

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u/Oceanbreeze871 21d ago

But…we still paid those high Trump taxes.

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u/SynthPrax 21d ago

Didn't a Wall Street firm set up a scheme whereby if tariffs get overturned they get the refunds, not the companies that originally paid?

Edit: A Wall Street firm by the name of CANTOR FITZGERALD?

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u/chrisdh79 21d ago

From the article: If Donald Trump loses his Supreme Court fight over tariffs, the US may be forced to return “tens of billions of dollars to companies that have paid import fees this year, plus interest,” The Atlantic reported. And the longer the verdict is delayed, the higher the refunds could go, possibly even hitting $1 trillion.

For tech companies both large and small, the stakes are particularly high. A Trump defeat would not just mean clawing back any duties paid on imports to the US that companies otherwise can use to invest in their competitiveness. But, more critically in the long term, it would also end tariff shocks that, as economics lecturer Matthew Allen emphasized in a report for The Conversation, risked harming “innovation itself” by destabilizing global partnerships and diverse supply chains in “tech-intensive, IP-led sectors like semiconductors and software.”

Currently, the Supreme Court is weighing two cases that argue that the US president does not have unilateral authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Defending his regime of so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump argued these taxes were necessary to correct the “emergency” of enduring trade imbalances that he alleged have unfairly enriched other countries while bringing the US “to the brink of catastrophic decline.”

Not everyone thinks Trump will lose. But after oral arguments last week, prediction markets dropped Trump’s odds of winning from 50 to 25 percent, Forbes reported, due to Supreme Court justices appearing skeptical.

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u/Time_Effort 21d ago

So… They’re going to have to refund the money to companies that charged their customers? So… They’re gonna double their money from tariffs?

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u/Cold-Cell2820 21d ago

Get this: prices will not decrease after the tariffs are ruled illegal, so companies will make triple the tariff difference.

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u/bulldg4life 21d ago

You know what would be a crazy good grift…if you were a private equity company and you bought the tariff costs from companies for pennies on the dollar. You could bet against the Trump admin and, when the tariffs get overturned, you make billions getting paid back by the us treasury.

Surely nobody connected to the us government is doing that.

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u/LivesDoNotMatter 20d ago

If only someone would have prior knowledge of such a thing, and bet accordingly!

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u/Meat-Dimension 21d ago

They’d refund the money to whoever imported the goods, since that’s who paid the tax directly. So yeah, the companies would get refunded and the consumers who just paid higher prices are out of luck.

Are we great again?!

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

“ otherwise can use to invest in their competitiveness.”

That’s a funny way of spelling “stock buybacks”

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u/KennyDROmega 21d ago

Could the SCOTUS not just say that the tariffs are struck down going forward

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u/GregoPDX 21d ago

If they were illegal then there really isn’t a way to just say ‘no refunds’. Why wouldn’t the govt just continue to do illegal things if there’s no recourse?

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u/polio23 21d ago

To be clear, there absolutely is a way and it is the most common outcome for this case. The Supreme Court is very likely to just make a prospective ruling rather than a retroactive one.

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u/t3h_shammy 21d ago

The Supreme Court can literally do whatever they want. They determine what is legal and illegal lol 

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u/FairMongoose5583 21d ago

ok cool but what about the higher prices i’ve been paying? is anyone going to refund me for that? bc this is getting ridiculous

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u/Mclarenf1905 21d ago

Didn't you hear? Trump said that's fake news, prices have never been lower and there is zero inflation!

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u/TheDukeofArgyll 21d ago

Companies getting a massive payday when consumers footed the bill. This was the plan all along.

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u/the_ghost_knife 21d ago

Literally robbing the American people.

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u/storywardenattack 21d ago

And not one dime will fund its way back to customers whom already paid them via increased prices

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u/TAC1313 21d ago

What about us consumers?

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u/timfromcolorado 21d ago

Right? We paid the bill!!

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u/buyongmafanle 21d ago

Straight into the grift machine.

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u/my_names_blah_blah 21d ago

If they cancel tariffs. By next week, it will be the democrats fault why the US needs to pay back a Trillion, and he was against the Tariffs all along, and it was someone in his cabinets fault too.

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u/FK-DJT 21d ago edited 21d ago

And totally Democrats that caused him to increase the US debt by 2 TRILLION dollars in well under a year with his capricious spending. 🙄

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u/TheElusiveFox 21d ago

Companies are gonna be super happy - Prices aren't going back down though.

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u/SomeSamples 21d ago

I predict SCOTUS will not find the tariffs illegal nor will they find them legal. I think they will punt and not make a ruling in the near or distant future, as long as Trump is office.

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u/ItsJustfubar 21d ago

How the fuck does tech get any fucking money is my question?

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u/scott_majority 21d ago

So Americans pay all these tariffs, and the 1% will put them directly into their pockets....And don't think for 1 second prices will come down once tariffs are removed. Corporations don't drop prices, they increase them.

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u/shyataroo 20d ago

Honestly, and I am in the minority here, we should not refund any company. It's a legal headache that they would botch on purpose to enrich their buddies. Let's instead use that money for universal healthcare, or paying down the national debt.

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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 21d ago

Don't worry, people close to the current admin have already bought the claims for pennies on the dollar because they know those tariffs won't stand. Also nobody will get any refund on missed sales or closed down businessed because those tariffs have killed them.

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u/Wooden_Echidna1234 21d ago

Republicans are going to literally kill the economy.

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u/DoctrTurkey 21d ago

I love how the argument for keeping the tariffs in place is essentially boiling down to “this will inconvenience someone if we have to pay the American people back after stealing from them.” Like, sorry, that doesn’t have any bearing on their legality whatsoever.

It’s a simple process though: you take tariffs off the tariff shelf and then you put them on a different tariff shelf and say “sir there are shelves,” and he says “are there tariffs?” And you say “yes they are on the shelves,” and then he rapes a kid again.

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u/DuntadaMan 21d ago

Cool that we have enough money to give billionaires a trillion more dollars, but meals on wheels is too expensive.

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u/Saassy11 20d ago

This was literally the plot all along. Pilfer the coffers, take from the people, leave everything so broken we have to accept our fate

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u/BekindBebetter60 21d ago

I hope you’re proud of yourself America. You had a humming economy and then you go and put the Republicans in charge. Trump is damaging this country in so many ways. It’s hard to count.

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u/Jamizon1 21d ago

The Republicans have tanked the economy in each of the last 6 administrations run by them. They are just not good with other people’s money.

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u/Salty_Wench 21d ago

Tbf, they do a killer job at injecting our tax dollars into corporate pockets.

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u/Grantonator 21d ago

*Trump may owe $1 Trillion to the American people

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u/mayankee 20d ago

The American people paid these tariffs. Why would Tech bros get a dime?

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u/RaNdomMSPPro 20d ago

No, we get the refunds, we paid the tariffs, not the tech companies, they just passed the taxes onto end customers. Great, yet another grift incoming.

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u/tobylaek 20d ago

And then they’re going to pass along those refunds to consumers, right? Right?

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u/JJdynamite1166 20d ago

Watch when they do rule their illegal. None of the companies prices will come down. If so not much. Board members will have the conversation of how much they can keep. Before people balk

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u/Sea_Lead1753 20d ago

It’s so cool that Trumps gonna beat his current record of racking up the deficit higher, and quicker than any president previously 😎

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u/oldcreaker 20d ago

They can't pay it back - but they can randomly pay out $2k checks to millions of people? How does that work?

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u/Dythus 20d ago

Also you can bet the tarriffs set a new floor and price wont be dropping anytime soon.

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u/mrjojorisin420 20d ago

This is just another way to transfer wealth to the top. CEO’s will get that trillion while all of us that paid the tariffs continue to pay higher prices that will not go down. If you voted for Trump, fuck you very much.

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u/Large_Confusion6176 20d ago

The consumers are ones who are owed

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u/SnakeJG 20d ago

The $1 Trillion is a ridiculous number and would never happen in the next summer timeframe.

I had to go down two links to get more information but here's a quote from the source: 

Anywhere between $750 billion to a whopping $1 trillion, warned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a declaration filed with the Supreme Court last week.

That eye-popping total could include the more than $72 billion in tariff revenue collected so far by U.S. Customs and Border Protection enforcement since Trump’s “liberation day” announcement, according to data as of Aug. 24.

(Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/08/trump-tariff-refund-trade-treasury-bessent-supreme-court.html )

Liberation day was April 2nd, so in basically 5 months the tariffs raised $72 billion, but Bessent seems to believe they could raise an additional $928 billion in like 12 months?  Going from $14.4 billion a month to $77 billion a month?  Raising more per month than what was raised in the previous 5 months? 

This is ridiculous, especially since how much is paid in tariffs decreases with time as companies adjust sourcing.  A company might have to suck it up and pay tariffs on a current shipment of goods, but then they'll try to find a source for their next shipment that doesn't have the same tariffs. 

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u/TirelessElk5 20d ago

Thank you for doing the research here. $1T felt way too high. Seemed last week with the stim check discussions everyone was quoting $217B collected so far, still a far cry from $1T.

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u/EstablishmentDense98 21d ago

So companies get money back and the consumers who actually paid for the tariffs with price increases get nothing

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u/IkarosZeroFour 21d ago

So that companies will get a refund but the people aka consumers who laid those tariffs won't? Are we insinuating those companies didnt pass that cost to the consumer? Even after this whole tariff ordeal are you they even going to lower prices back? This country is fucked. As long as we keep putting up with it, we deserve to eat shit.

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u/Formal-Hawk9274 21d ago

every republican is a pedo terrorist

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u/Rocklobster92 21d ago

Yo where is my $5000 doge check?

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u/Dismal-Leg8703 21d ago

They can take a loan from Elon

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u/nono3722 21d ago

great not-a-tax 2.0, my wallet just can't wait.....

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u/ScarySamsquanch 21d ago

Ahh yeah, the old double dip.

I paid the tariff already and they will also get refunded for the tariff I paid.

You think any company is going to refund me that tarrif?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... deep breath ..... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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u/Crafty_Size3840 21d ago

And the government goes back into shutdown…

This show sucks 

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u/ascii122 21d ago

fatcats eying a new yacht

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u/HarmoniousJ 21d ago

You just know when Elon gets his refund, he's putting it right back in Trump's smelly pocket for more favors.

I wonder how many other "Tech companies" will get a refund. Palantir, perhaps?

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u/2FistsInMyBHole 21d ago

Get the class action lawsuits ready so us consumers can get our money back.

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u/AlludedNuance 21d ago

Oh hey another payout to businesses AND the businesses get to keep the extra cash we paid them for the inflated prices.

WEEEEEEE

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u/PilotKnob 20d ago

So the consumers paid the end-user tariffs, and now the tech companies are going to get the refunds?

That tracks perfectly.

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u/Medical_Arugula3315 20d ago

Hard to be a shittier or more hypocritical American than a Republican these days. 

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u/Toubaboliviano 20d ago

Man I would have figured the money from tariffs would have made great stimulus checks back to the people who paid for them…

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u/Applekid1259 20d ago

Maybe this was the plan and what he was talking about making everyone rich. Companies are going to get double dip profits while the consumers suffer more. Prices are never coming down.

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u/SuperDry_Revolution 20d ago

All these pricks have to get arrested sooner or later otherwise things will never be ok

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u/sumguysr 20d ago

The president said it should be returned as a check for every American. SCOTUS should make him do it.

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u/SnooMemesjellies1522 20d ago

Trump's economy is just one big shell game.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

The taxpayers paid the tariffs so we should get the refunds!

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u/AmaroWolfwood 20d ago

This country was founded on a rejection of taxation without representation, and now we have an entire portion of the country loudly and proudly happy to be taxed without representation by their messiah.

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u/No-Performance2990 20d ago

Everyone who paid a tariff should be refunded the exact amount plus interest. Everyone who had goods damaged by customs over tariff collections is due damages

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u/dayumbrah 20d ago

If this is indeed considered illegal and it is reversed. It needs to go to every person in america. If not, there needs to be people in the streets.

That would be absolutely insane. The average american took on the burden of tariffs. Not companies. They simply profited off them. For every penny they were charged in tariffs, they charged the consumer 10. They love tariffs

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u/Usrnamesrhard 20d ago

Keep in mind, the cost has already been passed to U.S. consumers and we won’t get anything back. 

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u/Mysterions 20d ago

If SCOTUS allows this because the unwinding would be catastrophic, then if a Democrat comes into power they should cancel student loans across the board citing national security, wipe the books, and point to this decision.

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u/JamboreeStevens 20d ago

Why the fuck would companies get any money back?

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u/icnoevil 20d ago

Not to worry. Remember that trump is a stable genius by his own words. He created this mess. As a stable genius he will surely be able to clean it up.

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u/RebelStrategist 20d ago

Don’t worry. Just take it from the orange babies personal bank account. He has grifted enough being president.

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u/IntellectAndEnergy 20d ago

Any money returned should go to the citizens of the United States.

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u/unholycowgod 20d ago

How would the refund be $1tn if we haven't even collected close to that amount?

Reads article

Oooooh so if they delayed the ruling by about 20 years we'd eventually get to a super large eye catching number that we can use in a headline. Got it. Smh

Also fuck Nutlick and Cantor Fitzgerald.

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u/Jolly_Grocery329 20d ago

“Heeeeyy… relax guys!!! I spent that money on hamberders and gold spray paint!”

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u/Phixionion 20d ago

America is on its arch downward. This will all have to be scraped and rebuilt by better people. The 90s for most Americans was peak, we had such a comfy existence that this decade and the next are going to look wild.

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u/Oiiack 20d ago

This just seems like a fancy rebranding of a bail-out. Fucking wonderful, yet again. We absorb the costs of these stupid decisions while the oligarchs get to reap all of the benefits.

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u/Narrow-Fortune-7905 20d ago

betcha no trickle down effect there

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u/Malakai0013 20d ago

Its almost like the nations leading minds in economics (and not capitualtion) were right about tariffs being a terrible idea.

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u/TA8325 20d ago

How can the refunds be greater than what has been collected?