alt Hacker NewsJudge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs
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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.
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_bud...
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….
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?
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.
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.
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.
Putting aside the discussions of who will actually see any money returned, I will note that this haul covers about 100 days of war with Iran. ($1 Billion per day is the initial assessment from the Pentagon.) [0]
For anyone who was still under the illusion that the tariffs would make any impact on the government debt, hopefully this illustrates that both the tariffs and the ridiculous DOGE effort were never really about the budget.
US imposes tariffs, companies increase cost to offset price, consumers front the bill. Companies sue government, judge orders refunds, companies pocket money and keep prices at current rate. The people get screwed over twice.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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?
Wouldn't it be simpler to implement a 'spend-forward scheme' rather than returning? For example, spend that money on research grants and health care. It is returning the money to the people. A man can dream, no?
So corporations get refunds, I'm sure they'll issue refunds to consumers any day now.
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.
So the consumer ate the tariff (I saw somewhere that they just got passed on for the most part). Now the companies are just gonna get the money back and either enrich their exec staff or shareholders?
It feels like a company should have to prove they didn't pass the tariff on to consumers in order to collect this.
The American people will be robbed blind and beaten into submission until there is a reason not to. It's that simple. They have NEVER been punished, why would they stop?
Love this:
The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the government hadn’t yet formalized its position on refunding the tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old law. “Your position is clear,” the judge said. “The Supreme Court told you what your position is.”
I ache for the day we were governed by people who were competent and wanted to govern.
If you're an American consumer who had the tarrifs passed on in higher prices wouldn't you feel totally robbed by this whole ordeal?
They will never pay this without a fight.
Good time to specialize in "tariff litigation", if you're a law firm.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Did the people pay for the majority of the tariffs, like 80% percent? But the companies are getting this money? How is this now just a transfer of what I paid to these companies? They just get free money at my expense?
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.
Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...
But hey, we’ve got to own the libs!
I swear to God, the generation that voted the most for this stupid SoB will go down in history as the most stupid so far, like straight out of the Idiocracy.
Trillions of world wide economic damage, irreparable damage to transatlantic cooperation, death of post ww2 order. All because McFuckity Fuck saw online that brown man bad and there’s inexplicable feminist agenda, also somehow America needs to become great again because being top world economy is not good enough. Also soyjack memes.
At least our president made a lot of lawyers happier.
Ha, ha, ha. Someone, somewhere, ordering government to do something. Thank you for the best laugh today.
The past 20 years have been an endless series of wealth transfers from commoners to the wealthy. This is Oligarchy.
So we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?
Trump is not a competent person. How did he ever get rich?
If consumers indirectly pay the cost of tariffs, who pays for the dead-weight loss of taxes on domestic employers?
Good. Perhaps the administration should follow the law.
“We live in the age of computers,” Eaton said. “It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn’t need a manual review.”
lol
Trump should be personally liable for this. He knew it was illegal but he still did it, to the harm of US citizens.
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
If I illegally forced a bunch of people to give me $130 billion, the courts would not stop at making me pay them back. I and all my co-conspirators would go to prison forever. We should accept nothing less here.
Worst president ever.
... 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.
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.Good luck with that.
Chaos is a ladder.
Trump doesn't care who went bankrupt or lost money, he was able to create a whole pile of red number buying opportunities for his friends in the know. And for himself.
It's now an age of oligarchy, stable corporate capitalism and gentlemanly bourgeois behaviour and the appearance of "rules based order" and equally brokered commerce is out, schoolyard bully attitude and "give me your lunch money" is in.
If you still want to profit, you make friends with the right people, kiss the ring, and get permission to become a highwayman or parasite like the rest of them.
At the bottom, is us. I don't think any election can put the cork back in this bottle. The only thing that will end this decline is an angry non-compliant populace that is sick of getting a very bad deal.
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
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