If you, as a consumer, directly paid one of the illegal tariffs, you can get a refund via the shipper who acted as an agent for you.
For example, here’s the form if you shipped something over the border using UPS and paid an illegal tariff to get it released from customs.
Does this mean UPS is going to stop sending me demand letters for extra money on a thing I already bought, paid for and received?
I keep wondering if they’ll escalate, but I’m refusing on principle.
If you already received your item(s) and you don’t immediately need to do any more business with them, it sounds like they don’t have a lot of leverage to get you to pay.
Sounds like that might have been a screw up on their part.
Yes, technically the truth. In practice the vast vast majority of consumers bought from a business that imported the item. So it’s good to highlight people have options, but the broad point of the post stands, that the businesses have the option of pocketing the difference and most of them seem to be taking that option.
That doesn’t matter if you paid inflated prices on already imported goods.
We pay. Then we pay again.
It’s as simple as that and just as fucked up. Our so-called government does not work for us.
“Pay to play? You mean the peasants get to play? Why?”
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Which is why it needs to be burnt, and then built better.
As per its original design
Socialize the losses, privatazie the games. It’s crazy when people complain about socialism while these billionaire companies get to reap the best parts of it.
I’m not sure what other system is even conceivably possible in the general case. There’s no straightforward universal relationship between tariffs paid by businesses and prices paid by the customers of those businesses.
I think the best system would be not to allow tariffs to be illegally implemented in the first place. But I realize that’s asking a lot.
I dream of having a functional government. I know everywhere has issues, but rule by EO from a wannabe dictator is tiring.
Sounds very unAmerican.
How about, instead, all tariffs money paid go directly to rich, land-owning white men?
Now that’s closer to the American that I know.
We could at least not have taxpayers foot the bill for businesses to get free money.
There were some businesses passing the fees on directly to the end consumer via tariff implementation fees, but unless you have something like that itemized on an invoice, I believe you would be correct.
A business that passed 100% of the tariffs on to consumers via higher prices could still be worse off after getting a refund than it would have been if there never had been tariffs, if demand is elastic enough, so I’m not sure even that sort of data could resolve the question of who deserves what.
Take the total tariff income, divide it by the number of people in the country, and send out the checks.
It’s the ONLY legitimate way to handle it.
That sounds fair in theory, but would not hold up as soon as the first person felt slighted and challenged those terms in court.
Let them. It’s better than “nobody will let it be fair so we won’t even try.”
How about lowering prices? Do companies have a straightforward way to do that?
Let’s be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They’d waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.
But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it’s pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They’ve already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.
It’s money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we’ll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.
Man for a second I thought you were serious and was getting my pitchfork ready. Bravo.
I mean… don’t put it away. You should still take the opportunity to make sure it’s nicely rusty and dull. We do need everyone to have them ready. That sarcastic message of mine is still describing what the government and corporations actually did to us. And they’re not raping and killing their own kids. Well… they probably are raping their own kids too. But not killing or possibly eating them.
Since they’re now all in charge of investigating and arresting themselves and their buddies and passing laws to stop their own blatant corruption it seems that us stepping in with pitchforks might be necessary very soon.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do?
You say that, but something a lot like that already happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008
Most taxpayers below the income limit received a rebate of at least $300 per person ($600 for married couples filing jointly). Eligible taxpayers received, along with their individual payment, $300 per dependent child under the age of 17. The payment was equal to the payer’s net income tax liability, but could not exceed $600 (for a single person) or $1200 (married couple filing jointly)
Most everyone I knew spent it on HDTVs. Economic stimulus indeed.
You think I don’t rem… oh Christ, it was 18 years ago? There really are people here who wouldn’t remember it.
Yes. I know. I’m sort of surprised anyone could read my post and not see all the sarcasm. I do not really believe that spending money on food or rent is wasting it. It’s needing to use that money in order to keep living. Companies getting it all to make the rich richer and buy yachts and new faces is not something I actually consider to be better.
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You forgot to add ‘in greenland’ at the end. That’s why they want it they can set up billionaire land while the rest of the world is 50C in summer.
Ooh, good point. I hadn’t thought much on it beyond the minerals thing the news likes to go with. That’s far more likely.
Even if it was $6, refunding it to us and showing a little respect for a major cash grab fuck up would work wonders.
Your argument amounts to “you dont get your stolen money back because you will spend it irresponsibly.”
Thats sovcit-level quackery.
You ate at the onion.
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Sorry, that response wasn’t for this post, it was for another one. I’m not sure why it went to yours.
I ordered a pair of boots from Mexico, they were shipped with all of the correct paperwork and should not have been tariffed at all. It added ~$60 to the original cost of $170.
When you submit a tariff refund request they warn you multiple times that if your submission is rejected you will be charged $100 per submission. It can be rejected for making a mistake on the paperwork even if they find the tariff was applied incorrectly. I almost didn’t submit for it, and a lot of people won’t but I decided to risk it. That was a few months ago and I still haven’t heard back.
And you never will. Thanks for playing The Decline of Democracy and Sanity.
No refunds 😆
What in the jesus brother. I take it you’re voting in november
I’m voting for Troy Jackson in Maine hopefully he beats Collins. Going to go out canvassing and call some people so that if he loses I can’t say I didn’t try.
🫡
Those halftone rosettes bring me back to my printing days.
This is why I can’t be angry at regular criminals, they’re just mimicking the world they see at the top.
I kicked a trumper out of my D&D group after I finally got of tolerating his shit. He thought Trump would be better for our economy. No regrets.
We should be doing a lot more than kicking them out of social groups. They’re traitors to our nation who are degrading our quality of life.
But we do what we can on an individual basis. I applaud you. I’ve removed all of them from my life as well. One of the best moves I’ve ever made.
This was so obvious that anyone paying attention could see this coming a mile away. I’m probably the unpopular opinion, but I think the government should have just not issued any refunds. I would rather the government get funds to potentially use for social welfare than to give it back to businesses. The only problem is that would create an incentive for the government to try it again for another quick payday. Some mechanism would have to be put into place to stop this. Take away the power from the president to issue tarrifs on his own. Which we should probably do anyway.
Funded the war didn’t they
With only $160 billion? No.
Well of course trump and his cronies took their cut first
The civilised world has always sneered at 'Murica
But now we look upon the disaster with great pity for those who have been unfortunately born there who deserve better
Don’t buy anything not entirely necessary until this shit is done. As usual consumers hold the bag.
Just wondering how many more times in my life I’m going to watch dipshit Republicans make dipshit moves that require dipshit bailouts that aren’t for the people paying for the dipshit bailouts.
They are available to anyone who imported and paid a tariff. If you did that, you can get a refund. Being ‘a business’ or ‘a consumer’ is completely irrelevant.
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That’s wealth redistribution.
