The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.
I could see an argument that they don't have a legal obligation to pass the refunds on to their customers, any more than my local grocery store owes me 5 cents for the gallon of milk I bought last year if the store discovers that their wholesaler had been mistakenly overcharging them.
The difference this time is the scale is orders of magnitude larger. Will be interesting to see how they (importers and CBP) work through this.
The administration will just do nothing. They need 3 maneuvers for this to drag out longer than Trump 2.
There is no intention to follow the law here.
1. Claim to refund the money to each taxpayer with a Trump-signed check.
2. The number of checks will not total $200 B. Any reporting to the contrary will take up space from the truth about Epstein.
3. Before 2028, a loyal SuperPAC will form with hundreds of billions in dark money.
I've got receipts.
Literally. I have receipts for hundreds of dollars where the tariff is itemized (from JLCPCB, etc.)
The U.S. Treasury has a whole system for this, but in the other direction. If the government owes you money, and you owe the government money, the Treasury will deduct what you owe from whatever they are paying out.[1] But they're not set up for that in the other direction.
UPS didn't even deliver the product.
I'm suing them in small claims.
We'll see what happens.
I imagine that even after the ruling, our ass backwards legal system will somehow say this makes sense, even though the tariff rate was never near high enough for that bill to make any sense.
Further, they're going to get refunded the $10 it MIGHT have cost them.
There are going to be a raft of class action suits based on this.
As one of my lawyers once said, the only winners here are the lawyers.
Congress is full of lawyers do it’s pretty natural that they make rules that favor lawyers.
It's not the point, but why were you doing this? Surely internationally shipping a sack of sand is more painful than getting a local one?
It was interesting to see shops in the border towns of south & south east Switzerland buying & selling products from Italy, a relatively cheaper market.
Pre Brexit, I encounter a shop that did this in London and was surprised.
Having just been over there again, it's not hard to be entirely cashless, so the convenience isn’t missed.
Italians seem to like dealing in cash, with various taxis and hotels being cheaper if you pay cash. I guess that means it’s off the books?
Before: Importer pays China $10 for widget, pays $2 duty, sells to shop for $12 - profit zero, tax on that zero.
Now: Paid $10 for widget. Paid $2 duty, sold for $12, $2 refunded - profit $2, pays tax on the $2.
At least that's the normal way of doing accounting. There can be odd exceptions and complications in local laws.
I did what passes for research these days and concluded that if the claim is "probable and estimable," then it could be recorded as a "contingent liability" rather than other income. Relevant facts would include whether the tariff refund included a pass-through refund mandate (unlikely with this administration), or whether class actions for refunds against merchants were pending (inevitable).
That's what matters, don't care if it's the seller or a middleman that gets this money.
That's really a shame for american citizens, i'd be furious if i was american.
I can otherwise understand how people would agree on paying more for their stuff if it allows their fellow citizens to have a job.
After the liberation day tariffs were announced, 34% of the people thought they were good.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
Even if you knew nothing of Project 2025 (somehow), you were warned.
He has long argued tariffs boost American manufacturing - but many in the business community, as well as Trump's political adversaries, say the costs are passed on to consumers
It’s reported as if someone still needs to figure out who pays the tariffs in the end. I’m aware that tariffs are a lever to potential move buying behavior and give incentives to move production locally. But in this instance and how it’s/ was implemented it’s clear who is the paying for it.
The tariff stuff is just a variation of the republican dream to replace income tax with a sales tax. Big tax cut for higher incomes while raising taxes for lower incomes.
Very few were on top during The Gilded Age and it has been EXTREMELY clear for quite a long time now that the "Great" in M.A.G.A. is a reference to the 1880s, not the 1950s.
And so on and so forth. In each case, vote for Trump was to harm someone you look down at and to dominate over another group.
They'd be too underpaid and exhausted to rule over their own dinner before falling asleep for the night.
When you vote, you vote for an entire platform and you especially vote for central campaign promises. You don’t get to say “I voted for a world where I’m on top” and then say “but not for the primary method the candidate promised to use!”
The rest of it was just gravy.
Trump claimed that Obama was "the founder of Isis" and claimed MANY times that he was not born in the United States. [1]
So yes, he is completely loony... and very blatantly a racist who sends dogwhistles to other racists regularly.
No, he is not friends with Obama or Biden. In fact, Trump is the first president in 150 years to refuse to attend the inauguration of his competitor after losing. [2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_religion_conspira...
[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/508194635270062080
[2] https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/notably-absent-pres...
Such a kleptocracy.
If they do, that's another matter, but they definitely can.
So it matters how we’re interpreting “paying”. One way to look at it is that if the cost was passed on to the consumer, the consumer paid it. The importer simply handed over the money.