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Those halftone rosettes bring me back to my printing days.
Good band name
Which? “Those halftone rosettes” or “my printing days”?
I think “Back to my Printing Days” could be the title for their album or single
It would be a ~2010 style hipster folk band with lots of beards and mustaches and flannel. Probably a standup bass.
yes
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.
Neat. I paid a business that forwarded the costs to me. Who do I appeal to?
Depends probably on the nature of what “forwarded the costs” means.
If the business collected the costs from you and then forwarded them to CBP while acting as your agent, then you can demand a refund from them or sue them.
If you agreed to purchase goods for one price while also agreeing to pay a separate “tariff reimbursement fee” in exchange for purchasing the goods, you’re probably shit out of luck.
Various shades in between might be arguable or litigatable one way or another.
Do Amazon receipts have “extra tariff fee” as a line item?
no, the prices are technically unrelated to tariffs.
That doesn’t matter if you paid inflated prices on already imported goods.
Yeah, the comment conveniently seems to forget that most people paid tariff costs not by directly importing something, but by simply buying the thing at a tariff inflated price in a store.
There’s no refund for those, and that is where the largest part of tariff costs has been paid.
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.
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.
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.
We could at least not have taxpayers foot the bill for businesses to get free money.
The system would be not having a lunatic who implements tariffs at a whim and based purely on insider speculation and temper tantrums.
It would at least be a start.
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.
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.
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Hindsight is 20/20
I’m not sure what other system is even conceivably possible in the general case
How about a check to taxpayers rather than a handout to businesses who had already marked up and profited from the sales anyway?
do you have proof every buisness did that?
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.”
From a fairness point of view, for non essential goods, if you paid higher prices with the tariffs you would also have paid it without the tariffs, so you weren’t really harmed by it.
Essential and non-essential are almost meaningless distinctions for most goods people use on a daily basis. I could LIVE on beans and water. Do I NEED toothpaste? Aspirin? How much am I allowed to enjoy something before it’s a non-essential good?
People paid more for something because they were forced to, and it wasn’t for any economically necessary reason, and the cause was illegal, making it tantamount to theft, and refunds to companies equivalent to receiving stolen goods.
Nitpicking the necessity of the good is a cheap excuse to do nothing, not a gotcha.
If paid the higher value with tariffs you would pay it any way. And if everyone was willing to pay the higher price then it would already have been higher. That’s how capitalism works. No CEO will charge less unless they think it will increase profit through volume.
Companies that increased prices because of tariffs probably lost customers in the process.
Americans will put up with anything. Fucking losers
It’s ironic
They have to work so hard to survive, and yet, when it comes to thinking, they’re incredibly lazy
I genuinely pity them, because I know that as a society, they’re only in such a situation because they’re beaten into submission and apathy
They’re placated by unbelievable convenience, having everything an hour’s delivery away, and numbed to the fact that that means someone is slaving (I use that term deliberately) for their laziness
The mental gymnastics to justify every part of that shitty, exploitative excuse for a society are endless
And when they see other cultures, where we are actually free, they point and laugh, because they are too ignorant to understand
I spend a lot of time in 'Murica, under duress
I hate the place, I see the cruelty and ignorance, and I would gladly offer asylum to those who deserve it, but even amongst the relatively civilised, that’s a small number
They’ve been trained from a very young age to never question the system. Pledge of allegiance before classes. Anthem before every match. Flags everywhere. Hollywood teaching everyone America will save the world yet again. It’s very hard and impossible for many to break that programming.
I still remember when I first came to the US and my class did the pledge of allegiance. I was so confused, it was like I’d unwittingly joined a cult.
Oh, I know it
Even those who move to civilised countries still struggle to break the chains sometimes
Freedom doesn’t come with intelligence, morals or ethics, only consequences.
'Murica is one of the least free places I have ever experienced in the world
They are quite pathetic. All these decades of saber rattling and pleasuring themselves to the fantasy of American freedom and democracy only to be led passively by the collar into their prison cells.
as long as there things like tiktok, amazon, youtube,etc. yes. and many enough of a income to have creature comforts.
As long as i can have my 5 dollar burger for 20 dollars delivered home by a guy who makes no money, it’s all good
Because businesses are the ones that pay the tariff, not customers of the business. Did the extra tariffs give some companies an excuse to raise prices? Definitely. Does that mean the customer deserves a refund? Definitely not.
Correct me if im wrong. If businesses raise their prices to reduce the impact of tariffs on profits then the person actually paying the tariff (atleast to some extent) is the end customer, no? Is it not then only fair for the person who actually paid for this to be compensated appropriately when it is deemed unconstitutional?
To me it seems insane that the people who already tossed away the problem further down the chain is to be compensated at all when they are not the ones who have primarily suffered the effects of it. Even if they where first in line to deal with it.
And then the refunds come from public tax dollars. So the customer has paid the unconstitutional tariffs twice. It’s a blatant transfer of wealth upwards, no other way to really cut it
I did not specify where the money comes from. But you are correct in that scenario. However, it would not necessarily have to go that route. If a company pays the government for tariffs, then proceed to get that money back, that money should then be returned to the end-customer that in the meanwhile has paid more. I fall to see how this is paid by public tax money although I am also not american nor do I know the specifics of the US tax system.
Unless they specifically included a new tariff fee or charge, they’re just charging the price they think people will pay.
Yes… buuuut they forward that cost to the consumers. The buisneses dont go:“Wops, we need to pay more for items, lets keep the prices the same for the consumers.” They increse the cost for the consumers.
Sure, but the customer isn’t paying the tariff. The customer is just paying more for a product. The business is paying the tariff.
It’s a “technically correct” thing, sure, but it’s why customers aren’t owed the refund. Businesses can increase prices whenever they want.
I get what you mean, i think my point is more regarding who the sufferinf party is.
The customer is the end “sufferer”. So should have the repirations. This is a wierd metaphot but hear me out. Lets say someone tries to shoot me. I dodge it and someone behinds me gets shot. A judge ordera the shooter to pay for the medical bills. Would it be fair for me to get that money? Or should it go to the person who got shot? Yes maybe i deserve some compensation. But compleatly ignoring the person who got shot feels wrong no?
The person didn’t choose to get shot though, while you still chose to buy the product at the higher price. That’s the difference.
Why the price went up makes no difference to you as the customer.
I get that it sucks that prices went up because of an illegal tariff, but the customer didn’t pay the tariff so they’re not entitled to a refund. The tariff was paid before you bought the product, by the business. The best you can hope for is that prices will go down, but unfortunately that’s unlikely.
That would be fine and dandy if tariffs were only for frivolous purchases. Things you could do without. But they weren’t. We were FORCED to pay higher prices for thing we NEED due to companies raising the prices due to illegal Republican tariffs.
We were robbed. Again. Period.
And anyone who was robbed deserves compensation.
You chose to pay it. That’s the opposite of being robbed.
You sweet summer child
So you’re saying businesses should now cut deep discounts for buyers, because the (already imported) products’ tariffs have been paid (AND the business is being refunded for it). Are they going to drop prices now? Are they acting upon market pressures or taking advantage/manipulating them?
If you think a wealth-class has to pay any mind to the invisible hand of the free market… I’ve got a nice ass bridge to sell ya, at a tarrif-free + ultra-discounted price!
You’re just making shit up.
I’m saying that the business is the one who was invoiced for the tariff. The customer wasn’t. The business increased the price to cover their extra cost, probably even added some extra profit on top as well, but that still doesn’t mean the customer actually paid the tariff. They didn’t. The tariff is paid on import, not sale.
So if the customer paid more to cover the cost, why are the businesses entitled to a refund… that will come from the taxpayers?
Because that’s not how buying and selling products works. The business chose to increase the price due to increased costs. As you said , it was an increased cost to the business - so why would the customer get the refund?
The tariff was paid on import, not on sale.
Business has to pay tariffs
Business raises price to offset tariffs
Customer pays increased price
Tariffs are deemed illegal
Business receives refunds for tariffs
Customer pays the refund via taxes
How is this anything but a transfer of wealth from citizens (the customers) to businesses?
I mean, simply buying anything from a business is a “transfer of wealth from citizens (the customers) to businesses”, isn’t it?
But you get something in return, which should be of equal value to you
yes, and if you don’t like the exchange rate you don’t buy it.
Why on Earth would that not mean the customer deserves a refund? The entire cost of the tariffs has been placed on the customer. No business sold their imported goods at the same price after having paid the tariff fees, they all raised their prices.
Because the customer didn’t pay the tariff, the business did - unless of course the business flat out added a “tariff surcharge” or something of the like to the total that the customer can see.
Increasing the cost of an item by the amount of the tariff is not the same as making the customer directly pay the tariff. The business was charged the tariff. They were invoiced and they paid it. The customer didn’t. The customer just bought an item at shelf price.
They should go to Free Parking, and if someone happens to land directly on the square, they get the refunds. Life is just a massive game of Monopoly, ain’t it?
Go straight to jail.
Fun fact. That is not in the rules for monopoly. Of included it drags out the length of the game.
Yes, it’s a common house rule not an official one (tho modern versions of the game do include this and other optional rules in the booklet). But it rarely, if ever, draws out the length of the game. There’s only just under 3% of a chance to even land on Free Parking.
Fines like this should go to the consumer, but that’s impossible, so they should go into the America First Fund (irony intended), which be the seed money to provide the initial funding for all the social programs we need to start - healthcare, college/trade, student loan forgiveness, pre-k, UBI, etc.
As we investigate and prosecute MAGA crimes, any fines and confiscations, which should be harsh (including the confiscation of entire estates of treasonous families like the Trumps or the Ellisons), should be put into the America First Fund. The level of the fund should be mentioned in the evening news every night. Rich people can take note of the Dow, and workers can take note of the America First Fund.
They are available to anyone who imported and paid a tariff directly. If you did that, you can get a refund. Being ‘a business’ or ‘a consumer’ is completely irrelevant.
The issue being that when these companies imported their goods they passed on the cost of tariffs to the consumer. And then they were reimbursed for the tariff by the government. So essentially this is the consumer giving those companies more money, but with extra steps to try to trick consumers into believing they didn’t.
if you wanted a refund you could have purchased the goods from another country and impoted them, accepting the risk that there is no refund.
Well I don’t live in the US so I don’t have to do that stupid shit. Bit for american consumers, that wasn’t what was fucking promised. What was promised was a cheque from the government as a reward for enduring the tariff situation. Instead what they got was screwed.
I don’t think that the government ever promised a tariff rebate to residents directly.
The rapist or Musk may have offhandedly suggested on social media that they would, but anyone that believes anything they say is a fool.
Well a lot of maga people took it as a promise. Whether promised or not, it’s been a talking point from a lot of them that I’ve spoken to.
Most don’t even directly pass the cost to the consumer, they pass them down the line to retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, etc.
Then those companies add the additional cost to the product as the sell them … So only the importer is getting the refund, and only a handful of very large resellers are actually importers. Most small businesses buy from importers or wholesalers, and they won’t get anything back either.
But those small businesses have the option to pass those losses onto the consumer, and with blanket effects like tariffs it happens across the board. I own a small construction business, this is what happens when inflation goes crazy for my pricing anyway and it has never made my business not competitive for pricing before.
Absolutely. …
I own a software company, but we sell computer hardware to about half of our clients as well. We passed the increase in hardware to our clients as our suppliers passed it down to us.
But I’m not an importer, and my main supplier imports about 50% of what we buy from them. The rest they buy from manufacturers that import their own product, or importers (or possibly even wholesalers that buy from importers), and we buy some stuff at retail, since we just don’t need.
We absolutely struggle to be competitive, and more so now than before. We don’t have VC money, or credit card processor backing that many of our competitors do, so can’t give hardware away at below cost, or for free. At the end of the day, we decreased our markup to help keep prices down, knowing that we’ll ultimately make it up on software licensing over the next few years.
Even then, our customers are all businesses that paid the increased tariff at the end of the day, so how do they get their taxes back, since most people are suggesting returning taxes to individuals.
The whole thing is a freaking mess, without any real good answer that will actually make everyone happy.
Yeah your situation sounds a lot more frustrating than mine my friend. And you’re right, it’s more complicated than how I laid it out. But its the long form version of what the core concept I put forward was; the wealthiest of us utilizing the tariff situation to squeeze more money out of small business and working class interests.
There’s no doubt that some super wealthy companies paid the tariff, raised prices, sold directly to consumers, and get the tariff back as pure profit.
But there’s also a lot of layers and nuance that people are missing outside of those dozen or so companies.
Most retailers (especially small ones) don’t import anything, and a lot of those tariffs were on raw materials (like steel or aluminum), or small parts that get imported by the container or ship load, and then broken up and sold through a dozen layers of wholesalers / resellers to eventually get to a machine shop or a manufacturer, that then gets added to other material to become a component or product, and sold to wholesalers, etc and passed through the same layers again, and possibly even exported as a complete product.
All of this is what makes the prospect of refunding all of the illegal tariffs directly to consumers a real mess.
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
Please and Thank You.
I want better for us, and I’m fighting for it, but I have very limited personal power to enact change.
The way “we” looked at those “third-world” countries when I was a child feels like how everyone should be looking at us. Our squalor is not that of unclean water (but that is still true in places) or of systemic violence by the government (but that is still true in places) or of lack of reliable food (but that is still true in places). We have cellphones and internet, cars and roads, and air-conditioning, so we should be happy.
Our squalor is in the apathy and even antipathy a bulk of our fellow citizens have towards others.
The fix is education and awareness, but the means of enacting it have been hijacked. How do I reach someone on the west coast to be kind when I can’t touch them from the east coast?
There was a post recently, and I’ll link it if I can find it again, about Kevin and his truck, and how helping others builds community. Very wholesome. Community has been lost here outside of the uber-wealthy (they all know each other), or the “poor” who need it to survive. The “middle class” has lost the plot.
Don’t fight the system, play the game. Incorporate, become an LLC whose soul existence is taking care of you and run your purchases through that and get all the benefits.
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You probably can’t afford to bribe the right people to make that legal for you. Though, if you’re not even a tiny bit risk adverse, you could take the chance that by the time you’re caught, you’ll have the bribe money ready.
Generally speaking a non-profit cannot legally exist solely for personal profit or private enrichment.
So we were all robbed. Again.
That was always the plan, my friend.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany moment now…
… it’s going to start to trickle down.
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 faces that we’ll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.
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.
No matter what they spent it on, it was still stimulating the economy.
Even if it was $6, refunding it to us and showing a little respect for a major cash grab fuck up would work wonders.
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.
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.
No, I didn’t make any arguments. I posted what should be clear and glaringly obvious sarcasm.
You genuinely think people with very little money spending their portion of an equally split refund of the illegal tariffs on food, rent, and the things they need to survive would be using that money irresponsibly? Or that giving it all to the wealthiest so they can buy yachts, private islands, and new faces is the better use?
As Biden would say: Come on, man.
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.
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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.
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.
Which is why it needs to be burnt, and then built better.
As per its original design
As proposed by Thomas Jefferson; however, it is not assuredly by design because it was a group effort and the group was mixed.
Either way, the “decline of societies (at around 300y)” would support it anyhow.
“Pay to play? You mean the peasants get to play? Why?”
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“By existing within these borders through no conscious choice of your own, you are indicating that you agree to these terms.”
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.
