President Donald Trump

There may be statutory reasons the court has to approve a settlement that overwrite the general principle that Rococo is appealing to. Maybe better stated is that unless there is a statutory reason the court needs to approve a settlement, it seems in this case they wouldn’t need to do it.

Yeah I don't know why the original settlement was rejected and I didn't talk to anybody about it in the period between it was rejected and resolved....it did last a few months though. Could have been something as basic as not informing the court properly that a resolution had been reached for all I know.

The judge didn’t like how the banks didn’t have to admit wrong doing.

He was eventually overruled btw.

The case I'm thinking about was not Citibank and much smaller. I had always assumed it was for similar reasons but maybe I was wrong.

In a typical civil litigation brought by a private party against the federal government, a court does not have to approve settlement. That would make no sense as a requirement.

Right. And I explicitly said in my original post that the government and the tariff payor could agree to a resolution before a final adjudiciation on whatever terms they saw fit.

Correct.

This exactly.

Oh I completely believe this and don’t begrudge smaller businesses who suffered (and continue to) for this moronic exercise

But megacap companies getting to pad their profits by billions cuz of the recovery of this should infuriate everyone

And I’m also hesitant to believe the smaller businesses have the resources required to go to war with trump to get their money back. So really, at the end of the day, big **** small, trump makes life harder for the low and middle class, same as it ever was

That’s why they need the mega corps to win and set precedent

xyz importers paid the tariffs, knowing they'd be selling them at a higher pricepoint to offset it or that the margin was still going to be high enough that it was still worth it

this wasn't a retroactive thing - they knew what they were getting into and still made the decision to bring in the goods because it still made sense

i think repaying those people is not going to payback those that were hurt by them - if we do pay it back, it should be done like the covid money where everyone gets a check, it's far more reasonable - the idea of someone engaging in a business transaction knowing full well about the tariffs and then later getting money for it is crazy to me, especially since they likely just raised the prices to begin with and were largely unaffected - or better phrased not affected by any objective measurable

but even so, i'm mostly looking at this as a logistical issue, millions of companies paid those tariffs, the process of repayment alone is going to probably cost close to what is being paid out and there's going to be lots of fraud as people exploit the mess and over report

So, any info on the guy who got shot at Mara lago?

So, you don't know how to use a search engine?

Baked into the risk calculation of proceeding to import products under the tariffs scheme and eating at least part of the increased costs could have been that they believed that the tariffs could he overturned. After all, they entered into litigation precisely to try to get their money back from the tariffs even before they were overturned by the supreme court.

So I don’t think it’s fair to say “they knew the risks” when part of the upside was potential to get their money back from the tariffs, and it would create a bad incentive on government overreach to allow the tariffs illegally collected to stand.

This response doesn't address my main point about moral hazard. And I think it is a bad argument generally for a couple of reasons. First, CRD is correct. Assessment of risk is complicated in a scenario where the government has imposed an unlawful tariff and there is a strong possibility of a legal entitled to a refund. Second, you seem to be ignoring factors like business continuity. In the immediate term especially, the decision about whether to continue importing xyz product isn't simply a question of margins and ability to pass through costs. Third, you can think whatever you want about whether companies that paid tariffs should be entitled to refunds. But the reality is that, under the law, they very likely are. You can't eliminate that right by pronouncement or by mailing checks to people like we did during COVID.

I'm skeptical that "millions" of companies paid the unlawful tariffs, although it certainly was a lot of companies. In any case, the burden of showing that the tariffs were paid would fall on the party seeking the refund. If that party decided that the refund wasn't worth the effort of accumulating proof of payment, then it could choose not to seek a refund. If you are suggesting that the process will be absurdly expensive because the government is going to make it as expensive as possible as a matter of principle, well, that's no sort of argument. I am not inclined to give the government that imposed the unlawful tariffs a pass just because that same government promises to throw as much sand in the gears of the refund process as it possibly can.

If you are going to do refunds I don't see how it would be practical to refund anyone other than the actual party who paid the tariff. Anything else is just a mess that can never be resolved.

Although I obviously have been critical of rick's proposal, I freely admit that this refund process isn't likely to play out in a way that makes anyone happy. And I don't have any good solutions.

Here is how I imagine Trump would like to handle this situation. Through a combination of threats and inducements, Trump would like companies with large refund claims to drop those claims in exchange something that is more valuable to them, more obscure to the public, and easier for Trump to manage politically. In other words, the implicit quid pro quo would be: "Drop your refund claim. In exchange, the administration will praise you and get behind some combination of regulatory 'reform,' tax 'reform,' etc., that is more valuable to you. If you don't agree, the administration will punish your company using the same tools and criticize your company as unpatriotic and not committed to making America great." For smaller companies, Trump would simply like to make the process too burdensome to be worth pursuing.

The problem with how Trump would like to handle the situation is that the midterms could complicate his ability to deliver the candy required to induce companies to drop refund claims. I don't have a good feel for exactly how long the administration would be able to realistically delay the refund process, but if he thinks he can get away with it, then leaving the next administration with the tab would probably be the second best option.

cannon belongs in jail.

hopefully we can make that happen soon

Judge Aileen Cannon rules against releasing Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago report https://share.google/PZziJgJUifcByDF7p

Yeah, we wouldn't want this.

Cannon wrote that release of the report “would cause irreparable damage to former defendants” in the case, which in addition to Trump include former co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira.

i see two issues with this

the first is that it's impossible to really tack down who paid what - we know who paid the government the tariffs, we don't know if that was eaten, passed on to others, or some combination of both

GM, which paid 3.1 billion in tariffs is a relatively easy example to look at - yes they ate part of it, dropping their profit margin from 9% to 6% with the tariffs, but employees ate it too, those who were in on profit sharing schemes made about 10k from that rather than the 14k it would have been without tariffs, but a lot of that cost was passed down directly to the consumers

an equitable estimation of how it should be paid out is 54% to shareholders, 40% to customers & 6% to employees - but instead what is going to happen is 100% to the discretion of the executives - a group who will be facing heavy pressure from shareholders, no pressure from customers, and minor pressure from employees

it is incredibly inequitable and is likely going to be the single largest transfer of wealth from the middle and lower class to the billionaires we've ever seen in history

the second you misunderstood me, i wasn't concerned about companies spending time filing for the money - you may recall i hope they don't even issue refunds at all - the concern is the government apparatus to issue the refunds it will cost us billions to refund this all - and that's if everything goes smoothly - if it becomes a big legal nightmare it could be tens of billions - a classic situation where the cost of litigation and administration is likely going to approach the actual number at stakes

there are over 300k importers that paid tariffs and millions of people who operate as drop shippers, run etsy shops, or just bought something directly from abroad that paid tariffs as well - tracking all that paperwork is not feasible, there's going to be massive fraud like when people ask for fema money each time there's a natural disaster and they get overwhelmed and send out the checks

the fear here isn't dave_t not bothering to reclaim his $30 in tariffs paid from his hentai dropshipping biz, it's him filling out that paperwork and it cost $200 to process the refund, or he just claims he paid $30,000 in tariffs and it's not a big enough number to be worth investigating so they just pay him out

Lol people gonna need to crap their pants if strike Iran

Looks like crypto is in the shitter, so better get those lols.

Nobody believes in his promises.

What they do believe is embarassing Trump enrages him and he's likely to lash out. For example, if nVidia tried to get rebates, Trump could go even harder on export controls of nVidia chips.

this is not supported by fact - the people mostly don't, you obviously don't, but that doesn't mean that corporations won't - i agree with roc's premise and do hope if we come to refunding that this is the strategy we employ, because another secret deal for corporations is nothing new and anything, basically anything is a better alternative than paying them back as refunds

but as we've seen through how executives are cozying up to him and kissing his ass and how all those companies are settling lawsuits with him rather than fighting it - because they want to pay him off because they believe in his promises that doing so gets them what they want as well

Well, the president leads by example in this case.