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To the CPAs among us: will the refunded import taxes be treated as extra profit for all the importers who paid them?

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.

at the end of the day, it's average joe who bought his things more expensive, and he won't get back his money.

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'm also ignoring a bill, from UPS, that is a few bucks of duty and a much larger $14 fee. Presumably the large fee is because UPS isn't meant to collect taxes, but they can suck it.

A federal law has to be approved by Congress, that isn’t happening. An executive order maybe?

Understandable. With the intentional chaos since last year, tariffs were changing mid-shipment without any prior notice.

> Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them

Strictly speaking it depends on the Incoterms agreed upon by the seller and buyer[1]. If the Incoterms are DDP, then the seller should pay import duties and taxes and as such is involved.

Of course sellers are typically trying to run a business, so they'll bake the taxes and import duties into the sales price. So effectively the buyer ends up paying for it, just indirectly.

This was relevant when the tariffs were introduced, as sellers with DDP goods in transit had committed to a sales price which included any tariffs and would have to swallow the extra costs when they got the bill from the freight forwarder.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_risks...

Who pays the importer?

I guess by seller parent means the US company who sold the product to the US customer not the seller who sold it to that company.

> Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too?

I can see why you are mad, but it seems like the were fulfilling their legal obligation (at the time).

The good news is that having directly paid UPS and not a middleman makes it much more likely that you will receive the money back. If anybody does.

That's be nice, but I place more blame on the half of Congress that was OK with this.

If everyone sued them in small claims over it, there probably would be a whole lot of default judgments.

Where did you hear that? It is conclusively the opposite: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumers-busines...

The price of googs this last year bed to differ. Maybe for some bigger companies on certain products but what stores like Walmart did was spread the price increase across all products so it wasn’t as obvious. And that’s now where it’s going to suck the most, prices are not going to come down. Ends up being a free handout to them.

For goods for which no domestic equivalent alternatives exist, why would the foreign suppliers lower their prices to compensate for the tariffs (which are paid by the importers to the government)? More generally, the cost of the tariffs will be split between foreign suppliers and local importers/consumers according to the competitiveness and availability of domestic suppliers, and according to market elasticity for the respective goods.

It is a mixture of the two. But my reading of various studies indicates that in this mixture, the majority was passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.

> by the other countries

That makes zero sense. You mean “by lowering the profit margin on the goods sold to the US by that specific company”.

Countries don’t pay tarrifs (bar state intervention), companies do.

But yes, it’s probably a mix of the two: raising prices and lowering profit margins.

Here's evidence : https://www.kielinstitut.de/publications/news/americas-own-g...

"Importers and consumers in the US bear 96 percent of the tariff burden."

"American consumers bore 90% of last year's nearly six-fold tariff increase, adding $1,000-$2,400 to average household budgets, despite overall inflation dropping to 2.4% in January 2026."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2026/02/15/consumers...

What an odd thing to say.

The businesses in the other countries are, you know, businesses. Even if it were Chinese companies that were paying the tariffs, that will be baked into the cost of the good.

This is literally first-day economics. No such thing as a free lunch. The cost of the item that the end user pays should reflect all costs associated with production and distribution to that end user.

I have no idea how the fuck the rumor that these tariffs will be “paid by other countries” started. If there are suspicions that the tariffs are temporary then they might be willing to eat the cost temporarily so it’s not passed onto the consumer immediately, but that’s inherently temporary and not sustainable especially if it would make it so these companies are losing money.

Well, the analysis by the Federal Reserve said that domestic entities (consumers and companies) paid 90% of it. So, yes, saying that consumers pay it all is wrong, but it's less wrong than saying that foreign countries pay it all.

I don't recall seeing a split between domestic consumers and domestic companies, but I'm fairly sure that consumers are paying more than the 10% that foreign entities are.

It's much more true than saying that the foreign company pays it. Depends on how much slack there is in profit margins for both the exporter and importer, but the consumer does pay most of it, like 90%.

> There is no strategy here.

Unless the money is fully accounted and restituted, I believe we can assume what the strategy is.

Ever try to get Congress to agree on something without packaging in another thing?

I believe as a US citizen I have no say in how they make these decisions so this thought exercise is pointless. We all structure our governments differently and so compete globally with differing rules, I only care about how we do it here in the US. At times, what we do may be in reaction to others, but how we do it needs to be agreed upon here at home and for that we have a Constitution that gives this power to congress not the executive. I'm glad the court got it right, it's a glimmer of hope that the constitution still has some meaning.

> Do you agree with countries doing the opposite to the US?

Yes, please! Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

We need robustness in the global economy more than some megajillionaire needs another half cent per customer in profit.

In addition, we need competition in a lot of areas where we have complete consolidation right now. The only way to get that is to give some protection to the little guys while they grow.

That is not an unfair advantage, but protecting their domestic industries for reasons unrelated to the quality of the tech, for example to keep people in active employment, prevent bankruptcies, allow an industry to get up to speed, or a lot of other reasons entirely unrelated to the USA. All of these are valid; any country gets to decide who they want to allow on their markets, and to what conditions.

That is not what Trump has been doing, though. Using tariffs as retaliatory measures? As a threat because he didn’t get to "own" Greenland?

Let’s stop comparing sane political strategies to the actions of a narcissistic madman.

Absolutely!

>Do you agree with countries doing the opposite to the US?

If their laws allow their leaders to enact tariffs then sure, they're welcome to do it. Foreign relations is complicated partially because countries operate differently. In the US, Congress is supposed to levy taxes and impose tariffs. Not the president. This game of nibbling (now chomping) at the edges of that clearly outlined role needs to end.

>When for example US tech is better than the local alternative but the countries create unfair advantages to the local alternatives?

We can still enact tariffs and similar policies. We have the same mechanisms they do. I don’t understand what is so “unfair.” Trump just seems to call everything he doesn’t like “unfair.”

I think GPs point was that Tariffs are legitimate as a practice and that some people have been led to believe that they shouldn't exist at all.

When they rule for Trump it’s proof they are just a rubber stamp. When they rule against Trump it’s somehow also proof they are a rubber stamp?

> ...but we disagreed with him. This one time.

They've actually done so numerous times already and have several cases on the docket that look to be leaning against him as well. There's a reason why most serious pundits saw this ruling coming a mile away, because SCOTUS has proven to not be a puppet of the administration.

> For many years I wanted to believe they had a consistent and defensible legal viewpoint, even if I thought it was misguided.

Watching from across the Atlantic, I was always fascinated by Scalia's opinions (especially his dissents). I usually vehemently disagreed with him on principle (and I do believe his opinions were principled), but I often found myself conceding to his points, from a "what is and what should be are different things" angle.

Kavanaugh clearly isn’t in the same bucket. His votes go either way. I don’t recall seeing a single decision this administration where either Alito or Thomas wrote against a White House position. Not just in case opinions but even in an order. I don’t think we’ve seen a justice act as a stalking horse for the president in this way since Fortas.

Alito is one of the original proponents of the unitary executive theory (way before he was a Supreme Court justice). Everything he does should be looked at as an attempt to impose said theory and destroy America.

When all of your decisions can be predetermined without even knowing the context of the matter you are surely a hack. It goes like this.....'Does this matter benefit Trump, corporations, rich people or evangelicals?'. Yes? Alito and Thomas will argue its lawful. Every single time.

Extremely biased comment.

The SC ruling today:

1) Does not stop the president from enacting tariffs, at all. The dissents even spelled out that no actual change would come from this ruling.

2) The ruling creates the absurd scenario where the president can (under this specific law) totally ban ALL imports from a country on whim, but not partially via tariffs. It's akin to being able to turn the AC on or off, but not being allowed to set the temperature.

As usual, interesting discussion about the nuances of this ruling are happening on X. Reddit and HN comments are consistently low-signal like the above.

Thomas isn’t a hack, he’s a shill. And he’s not even trying to be subtle about it. He’s somebody’s bitch and he literally drives around in the toys they bought for him as compensation.

If any justice deserves to be impeached it’s him. I can’t believe they approved him in the first place. Anita Hill sends her regards.

This specific law does not allow imposing tariffs, which is the whole point of the ruling. Roberts’s opinion says that a tariff is essentially a tax, which is not what Congress clearly delegated.

Wrong law. Trump chose not to use the "impose tariffs for national security reasons" law in this case.

The whole legal apparatus of the US doesn't want to hear that but your laws suck. They're flawed because of the political system borne of compromise with parties incapable of whipping their members to just vote in favour of a law they don't fully agree with.

Old laws are often superseded or modified by newer legislation that's not novel or rare. This one wasn't because it hadn't been so roundly abused by previous presidents that it had been an issue worth taking up. It's the same with a lot of delegated powers, the flexibility and decreased response time is good when it's constrained by norms and the idea of independent agencies but a terrible idea when the supreme court has been slowly packed with little king makers in waiting wanting to invest all executive power in the President. [0]

[0] Unless that's power over the money (ie Federal Reserve) because that's a special and unique institution. (ie: they know giving the president the power over the money printer would be disastrous and they want to be racist and rich not racist and poor.)

Except that isn’t relevant at all. This Supreme Court is completely cooked. If the case was “can Trump dissolve New York as a state” you would still have 3 justices siding in his favor with some dog shit reasoning.

in the UK a similar unconstitutional behaviour by the head of government took...

from the start of the "injury":

    - 8 days to get to the supreme court
    - 2 days arguing in court
    - 5 days for the court to reach a decision

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe...

This is relatively fast for an issue to move through the courts.

Yes but in practice they delegate this power to the executive. Congress doesn’t run the IRS themselves after all

It sure is interesting how different things might be if RBG and Biden had stepped down instead of doing... whatever it was they did instead.

The failure of the US is not so much in judicial system (with some recent exceptions) mostly in how weak Congress has been for over a decade as executive power expands (arguably since Bush and including during Obama). The system was designed to prevent that from happening from the very beginning with various layers of checks on power, but the public keeps wanting a president to blame and fix everything. The judicial branch has been much more consistent on this matter with some recent exceptions with the Unitary executive theory becoming more popular in the courts.

Ultimately no system can't stop that if there is a societal culture that tolerates the drumbeat of authoritarianism and centralization of power.

Of which, only a small fraction will be relevant in any particular case.

It's kind of like pointing at any major codebase and arguing that it's "stupid" to have millions of lines of code.

I agree with Gorsuch, and I love this idea, but until the legislative branch abandons procedures that prevent the deliberation from happening in the first place, this will keep happening.

In a sense this is the correct level of punishment for all. The courts are slow and deliberative.

The Congress could solve this in a week. Impeachment and removal from office.

They've already voted once that a day isn't a day to avoid having to maintain some of his emergency declarations so I don't think that 150 day timer will actually end up running.

https://rollcall.com/2025/03/18/house-majority-rules-when-a-...

Yeah this is basically a thing everywhere. I was criminally charged in a certain mid-sized town, all I did was search through the court records to find the lawyer who always gets the charges dropped, hired them, and they went away for me too. Unfortunately that's the way the just us system works.

Ahh, Brad Bondi, who it is widely rumored to be attempting to join the Bar in DC for the convenient benefit of being able to wield influence in the event of anyone trying to push for disbarrment against Pam...

> they were just acting as a middleman

This is no excuse. If they knew this would be a business, being a broker of such deals would be sure to make them money.

> my impression is

not sure why you'd give them any benefit of the doubt. they haven't earned it.

That's what a bookie does. Middleman.

Ah yes, instead of applying the normal legal standard of “not even having the appearance of impropriety” we instead apply the monkey’s paw standard of waiting until they “no longer even have the appearance of propriety”.

Refunds to business, but unless they have to refund to consumers it's free capital to importers

The stated intention was to replace income taxes with tariffs; and it came with a bonus feature of handing the President a cudgel with which to grant him personal powers and personal rewards.

It's not a legitimate tax.

That's why it taxed the economy much worse than a legitimate President would do.

Presumably you're not a admin cabinet member or related to one or have inside info from those in the cabinet, which is the key differentiator.

If you read the opinions, it's even less clear. The majority does not make it at all clear whether or not refunds are due, and Kavanaugh's dissent specifically calls out this weakness in the majority opinion.

Even if the executive branch's actions stop here, there's still a lot of arguing in court to do over refunds.

The executive branch couldn't so much as order me drink a cup of tea unless it first drafted me into the army or declared martial law.

Why does that seem more likely? They haven't done that yet.

> without even shame enough to try to hide it well.

Why would they bother hiding it when the populace is apparently powerless to do anything about it?

And took his wife, kids, and their nannies to have lunch with Epstein. Years after he'd said he wouldn't associate with Epstein anymore, and years after Epstein's conviction.

If that was me, I would have used my substantial wealth to have lunch literally anywhere else in the world, with anyone else in the world.

SCOTUS left it unspecified, but the refund would go to the payer, legally.

An even more interesting one is that Ford was the first president to go on paid speaking tours after office. It's not like the 37 other presidents couldn't have also cashed in on the office in a similar fashion, but it was felt that such a thing would impugn the integrity of the office and also undermine the perception of somebody working as a genuine servant of the state.

There has most certainly been a major decline in values over time that corresponds quite strongly with the rise in the perceived importance of wealth.

Remember when the late President Carter was being laid to rest?

There was a tremendous outpouring of grief and honor, and so much heartfelt condolences. From all over America and the whole world. Deep respect as fitting as can be for such a great human being, for the type of honest & compassionate leadership you could only get in the USA, and only from the cream that rises to the top.

Every single minute it invoked the feeling that Trump deserves nothing like this ever.

You don't think there's already a replacement island?

If whoever runs in 2028 does not have a concrete plan for investigating & prosecuting every single person who worked under this admin from top to bottom, they are wasting everyone's time. We need to see hundreds of life-in-prison sentences by the end of 2029.

Lutnick is not a good man. There’s also this, from https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA012492...

“LUTNICK was a neighbor of JEFFREY EPSTEIN (EPSTEIN) in the adjoining property at 11 E 71st Street, New York, New York. LUTNICK bought the property for $10 through a trust. LES WEXNER (WEXNER) and EPSTEIN owned the building. LUTNICK bought it in a very roundabout way from EPSTEIN.”

This admin? Conflict of interest? Add it to the list.

> That’s an insane conflict of interest.

Welcome to America.

This isn't even in the top 10 of corrupt activities our government officials undertaken in the past year.

Serious question - what do you think the kids should do when their parents get political positions, not work?

America is pretty sick of both parties.

Had the Democrats ran a half decent candidate, they could easily have won. But they're just not capable of doing that.

We are sick of it, but despite being somewhat of a democracy, we have no real power in this two party, first past the post system when both parties always run establishment candidates, aka, billionaire thieves gang members.

The irony is that Trump won on a message of "drain the swamp" which was supposed to address this issue. Instead it seems like it's more of just "replace the swamp" with his own guys.

> So. Much. Winning.

Like the man said, I'm definitely tired of all the winning. Emoluments clause be damned.

For the Fox News crowd, which is most of his supporters, they are likely not even aware of these transgressions, as they are not reported there. Or, if they are aware, they are happy to see Trump enriching himself, because, own the libs or something?

Trump has a long record of stealing from Joe Average and had been doing it since between 2016. Joe Average thinks he’s clever for doing it.

I swear, if the dems aren't running on "here is all of the shit that Trump and his cronies stole from you" every single day for the next two years they are the dumbest political strategists alive.

Not import/export insiders, the Trump family... always just follow the money, maybe along the way some "import/export" people get some crumbs but most of it ends up a Mar a Largo :-)

Most of these seem at least plausible to me given they almost all have to do with foreign conflicts, and given that they have to be renewed every year, they can't be too excessive since Trump has kept in place 8/9 of Biden's emergency declarations? and your description of the most comedic one was actually maybe the most important one?

It was to stave off a bank run at the beginning of the great depression, and it was only done as a temporary measure so that Congress had time to write the long term legislation which they did 4 days later on March 9th.

Can always count on HN to mindlessly equivocate.

lol you say FDR was bullying Congress, as if the New Deal coalition wasn't the most successful political movement that this country ever had (won nearly every Presidential election (only losing to the man that defeated Nazis in Europe), had control of the House from like 1932 to 1992, nearly controlled the Senate for just as long too).

Attacking FDR, someone who stood up against business interests to defend labor, kinda exposes the game here.

Honestly FDR doesn't get enough credit for probably saving capitalism.

He borrowed just enough of the stuff socialists were promising, and bolted it onto the government to mollify the working class who'd been absolutely ravaged by oligarchs for the preceding decades. You only have to look at the rest of the world to see how things might've turned out without FDR's very reasonable interventions.

Are you equating covid to the common cold? If so, this comment is absurd.

I mean, you're right that a lot of liberties are taken with what constitutes an "emergency" these days, but when every other country on the planet is declaring the same emergency there might be some substance there.

Send a letter requesting a full refund.

If they refuse, sue them in small claims court.

Sure, if you are ready to sue the US government for that. /s

I dunno if a class-action lawsuit is realistic or not in this case or how likely a court decision stating that all tariff revenue must be refunded.

Were cat toys not made in the US? Especially if you were to factor and $18 delta?

Sorry, but tariffs on aluminum or steel that is only made in China or microchips or components. I think that’s a valid discussion to have. … you’re complaining about disposable cat toys that were likely made in a sweat shop where the workers were not making a livable wage and then putting in a container on a ship burning crude oil and pushed around the world so you can have some junk that was a couple dollars cheaper than a domestic option?

Not the same thing.

This is why I mentioned "litigation" in my comment, i.e. you probably would need to separately sue the government if you want to refund the tariffs.

Don't worry, DOGE saved us so much money it won't even matter /s.

To me this suggests that the problem is not cost, but lack of competition, either in production or in pricing. My understanding is that there are sufficient laws to ensure competition, but they are not widely enforced.

Plenty of supply-driven inflated prices did go back down after covid, or after the post-covid inflation shock. Gasoline is one example.

At the same time, USD M2 supply increased an unusual 40% from Jan 2020 to Jan 2022. It only fell a little after. So prices that were inflated for that reason, I wouldn't have expected to fall back down.

I do feel like some local businesses just price according to costs but keep that ratched up if costs fall, like you said.

Mouser (electronics parts distributor) just charges you an itemized tariff rate. They should go down immediately for those electronics parts.

Prices drop all the time. But no, they don't drop "automatically" as some kind of rules thing when regulations change. Prices drop when someone has extra inventory and needs to liquidate, or run a sale, or whatever.

Anthropomorphizing markets as evil cartels is 100% just as bad as the efficient market fetishization you see in libertarian circles. Markets are what markets do, and what they do is compete trying to sell you junk.

Great! Then the next step would be to simply pull out.

Most likely this weekend.

Correct, because of the Epstein files.

Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

How many more years will it remain inevitable, do you think?

I definitely think we should highly tax, or completely ban imports from countries that basically allow slavery of their working class. Though, if anyone were to bring that up now, it would incite all kinds of emotional attacks.

I could imagine people being on board with it if they could get a tariff funded subsidy for things made in America. If the average person got an explicit discount on their Ford because some rich person paid extra taxes on their Audi, then tariffs wouldn't seem so bad. I just think the actual goal is to make them political suicide for decades.

The important thing is that Trump can't do the tariffs beyond 15% on a whim anymore though. Like imposing tariffs on Canada because of an ad displayed in Toronto.

Trump aside. Congress is clearly not interested in setting budgets or tax policy.

TACOs?

I think you're misunderstanding at least a little bit here. The Constitution created separation of powers, but what it did not do is explicitly block a particular branch from either abdicating their duty or simply delegating their power back to the executive.

It's certainly an interesting situation that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the law. But as far as everything that's working, it's realistically all within the legal framework of the Constitution. There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.

In short, it's a whole lot of short-sightedness of the Constitution combined with willing participants across multiple branches of the government.

The problems unearthed and the damage being done will take decades to fix just our internal issues, and it's very likely we will never resolve our international problems.

I don't know what the future holds for the United States, but we are certainly going to be operating from a severe handicap for quite a while.

I'm not sure why Americans are so certain that their system of separation of powers is the right one. Most countries don't separate the executive and legislative like that. The executive is whoever can command the support of the legislative. If you think about the US system it makes no sense. An executive can just ignore the rules created by the legislative by just not enforcing it and the only means to stop that is a 2/3 majority in a body that by it's nature is not representative of the population but rather of States.

As far as I can tell the US system is designed for gridlock. Things like filibuster, lower house elections every two years, state elected upper body, electorate system are all designed to create girdlock.

While Americans as a whole are to blame for some of this they are working in a completely broken system. In tech we try not to blame a person when something goes wrong so we look at what process allowed this to happen. I think many of the US problems are explained by their underlying system which is basically a copy of the English one at the time of Independence with a monarch and a parliament. Unlike the English system though it barely evolved since then.

Have a proper mature parliamentary democracy made of multiple parties, not just two, and a prime minister that is always one vote away from resigning.

Slower democracy, sure, but fits advanced economies that need consistent small refactors and never full rewrites every 4 years.

I'd like to see a change in voting system to make voting for smaller political parties more viable. My country did this in 1993[1] so I've seen to some extent that it works. A lot of other issues in the US seem downstream from that top-level issue.

But sometimes I think about the fact that you guys don't even have the metric system yet...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_New_Zealand_electoral_ref...

The problems are a product of the constitutional system. I think the main problem is the elected king presidential system nonsense. Parliamentary democracy is the way to go.

> I don’t see how constitutional changes would help.

At the very least, we need a clarification on presidential immunity.

The American constitution is riddled with problems that many later democracies managed to fix. In general, the founding fathers envisioned a system where amendments were far more common and they didn't realize they made the bar too high. And that doesn't even touch on the electoral college, first-past-the-post voting, vague descriptions of the role of the supreme court, and no method for no confidence votes. Of course, it would be next to impossible to fix these in America because it would require a significant rewrite of the constitution.

The only way this will change is if the rest of the world leaves America behind and the quality of life here becomes so bad that radical change becomes possible.

But you are right that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, so you can't blame that on the system. But a functioning democracy would have more constraints on him. Our legislative branch has been dead in the water for 20 years at this point.

> The majority of American voters in 2024 asked for this

It was 49.8%, which is not quite a majority.

It's also worth noting that Kamala Harris received precisely 0 votes in the 2024 Democratic primaries.

[EDIT:] I see that the parent comment has now changed "majority" to "plurality."

If I could make one Constitutional amendment, it would be this: publicly finance all election campaigns, and make private contributions illegal bribery, punished by imprisonment of both the candidate and briber.

Fix some of the ambiguities that allowed power to be concentrated in the executive branch. Automatically start elected officials so things like avoiding swearing in don't happen. Limit the power of these executive orders. Introduce recall votes. Switch to public funding for all elections.

Theres plenty we can do. That's off the top if my head. I'm sure if smart people sat down to think about it there are lots of practical and clever ideas.

The majority didn't ask for this. 49% of voters did.

The majority of American voters can be as dumb as they want - the two big failures here are the legislature and the judiciary. The judiciary let an obviously illegal thing sit for far too long while the legislature is too partisan to actually take actions against the administration (except in the case of the Epstein files which has been surprisingly admirable and a rare ray of light in the last year).

If the majority of American voters elect snoopy the dog snoopy can do all of the things snoopy wants to do within the bounds of the law. Snoopy can use his bully pulpit to fight against dog restrictions in restaurants and grant pardons to previous offenders. Snoopy can ensure efficient spending of money on public water fountains accessible to canines... but if snoopy starts issuing open hand-outs to the red baron (snoopy in a moustache) that's when the other branches of government are supposed to step in - we aren't supposed to need to wait four years for the next election to stop open corruption (especially since corruption is really good at funding more corruption so there's a vicious cycle that can begin if you let it fester @see the recent FBI raid on GA election offices).

Necessary changes, off the top of my head:

1. Ranked Pairs voting for national elections, including eliminating the electoral college. Break this two-party duopoly of bad-cop worse-cop.

2. Enshrining the concept of independent executive agencies, with scope created by Congress, with agency heads chosen by the same national elections. (repudiation of "Unitary Executive Theory", and a general partitioning of the executive power which is now being autocratically abused)

3. Repudiation of Citizens United and this whole nonsense that natural rights apply to government-created artificial legal entities (also goes to having a US equivalent of the GDPR to reign in the digital surveillance industry's parallel government)

4. State national guards are under sole exclusive authority of state governors while operating on American soil (repudiation of the so-called "Insurrection Act"). This could be done by Congress but at this point it needs to be in large print to avoid being sidestepped by illegal orders.

5. Drastically increase the number of senators. Maybe 6 or 8 from each state? We need to eliminate this dynamic where many states hate their specific moribund senators, yet keep voting them in to avoid losing the "experienced" person.

6. Recall elections by the People, for all executive offices, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. (I don't know the best way to square courts carrying out the "rule of law" rather than succumbing to "rule of the fickle mob", but right now we've got the worst of both worlds)

Statutorily reduce the power of a rogue president by reinforcing the right of the administrative state to exist with some independence for the rank and file. Reduce conviction threshold in the Senate to 60. Eliminate the electoral college to guarantee the winner of a popular vote is the winner.

Importantly, prosecute every member of the Trump administration for their blatant respective crimes.

I agree with you that the Republican party has failed the country by allowing this to happen. But I think we can still do better.

More "big picture" ideas would be to fundamentally alter the House and Senate, and implement score/ranked voting to allow a multiparty system.

Genuinely, I think the US is pretty doomed if the Trump family and administration cronies aren't stripped of their wealth, tarred and feathered. If it is known that being president is a great way to make a bunch of money through corruption and there are no consequences then we'll be in the same situation as the Roman Republic in the waning days before Caesar. Caesar himself was funded by Crassus to make sure Crassus wealth making tactics stayed legal and grant him a big payout in the form of a rich governorship. Towards the end of the republic that sort of quid pro quo was standard operating procedure and if it happens and goes unpunished - if those benefiting see any positive RoI - then it'll just happen more and more.

Dunno. More than half the country was either enthusiastically in favor of electing a convicted criminal pathological liar or too apathetic to do anything about it. How do you fix that?

It's going to take a Constitutional Convention just for the states in North America to be able to regain their trust in Washington any time soon.

States' Rights have been slaughtered by these false patriots.

For sure, massive damage has been done to Brand USA. Remember the 'Allegory of Good and Bad Government" in the Siena public palazzo since the 14th Century? Everyone knows USA is just a bunch of grifters

I think that a lot of people would disagree that the economy is spectacular. People can't even afford to buy a home in a decent part of the country.

The economy is not spectacular by any means. It's about average on paper, and without AI growth (which will surely slow down like the .com crash) and increased healthcare spending, it's been mildly slumping.

Presumably congress could recreate the same tariffs, if they wanted.

I'm guessing you're American?

There are many countries that have functioning constitutions that are regularly revised.

It’s not impossible for the USA to get there one day.

Doesn’t this decision exactly prove the opposite?

What piece of paper is worth more to you?

I think the root of the problem is our two party system and the polarization of our culture. Congress and the president often act as a single partisan unit, not a collection of independent thinkers with their own ideas about how the country should be run. That makes it very hard for congress to serve as an effective check on presidential powers.

That's really the achilles heel of a checks and balances system. Should an ideology gain control of all of them then the system doesn't work and it immediately sinks into authoritarianism. The Supreme Court acting on this just unfortunately gives the illusion of things working when it's a game of blitzkrieg. Make an obvious illegal action and get as much done as possible then when you are eventually checked, move on to the next thing. Just keep pushing in different directions until you cover the board.

> And it looks like they’re going to do the same thing Democrats do when they don’t like a SCOTUS ruling, and try to implement the same tariffs in a slightly different way to effectively ignore the ruling

This is kind of a bizarre whataboutism to throw in there. The current administration (with the full support of Congressional majorities in both houses that have largely abdicated any pretense of having their own policy goals) has been flouting constitutional norms pretty much nonstop for a year now and literally ignoring court orders in a way that probably no administration has ever done before, and yet the playbook they're following for extrajudicial activity apparently is from the Democrats? Just because there's bad behavior on both sides doesn't mean that the magnitude of it is equal, and in terms of respect for the rule of law the behavior of the current administration really has no comparison.

> If Trump wanted to use tariffs as a tool for emergency purposes, he should have just taken action against China.

What is the emergency with China?

Like Switzerland that basically has zero tariffs on export to the US but was initially slapped with 39% because trump can't stand women in power? What about Brasil where trump stated the 50% tariff is punishment for putting Bolsonaro in prison?

the "global damage" is largely because these tariffs were arbitrary, lacking strategic planning, and highly inflationary creating a turbulence tax. The frequent reversals and selective granting of exemptions showed that its another tool to enrich the Trump family, cabinet and their business associates. In other worlds the rest of the world stopped trusting the US and started making trade deals on their own.

It's going to be nearly impossible for it to happen at once anyway, it's going to take a long time to unravel this mess

It may also have been because of the end of the de minimis ($800) tariff exemption. Without that exemption, even something valued at one cent would have to go through the import-tax collection process, which meant that small packages were no longer economical to send. That exemption is still gone.

Trump addressed the press a little while ago on this topic and claims he's not issuing any refunds until courts force him to. He chastised the Supreme Court for not telling him what to do about refunds, and essentially pleaded helplessness to do anything about it until he fights more lawsuits and rulings demanding specific action are issued, musing something to the effect of "I guess that will take another couple years".

He further claimed that this ruling puts his tariffs on a more certain basis(?!) because now he'll use different statutes that have been solidly litigated already (... so why weren't you opting to use those in the first place, if it's truly better? You didn't need to wait on this ruling to do that!) and that the only effect this ruling will have is a brief drop to ~10% across-the-board tariffs while they do the paperwork to bump them back up again under these other statutes. He repeatedly characterized this is good news for his tariffs, while also complaining extensively about the court and insulting the justices in the majority.

this is a classic example of fuck around and find out.

Any further action to end-around the Supreme Court decision and re-impose the tariffs will almost certainly require broad Congressional approval. And this is a very bad time to try to do that since nearly half of those seats are up for re-election this year.

I think this issue is effectively dead at least until we see how the new majority shakes out in November.

You can't get around the Supreme Court. Full stop. They can try, fail, and declare victory but they cannot find another way. They would literally be right back in the courts fighting their own consequences and punishment.

I know how that works but the speed and process should reflect the severity of the issue.

Illegally taxing billions from we the people? Should be addressed immediately.

And they have done that before….

Individual tax refunds are far different than this.

From the guy that invaded Florida... I wouldn't be surprised if it was Andrew Jackson though.

None of these were intended to be long term investments for anyone.

They exist as a way for money to be given to the Trump family in an legally obfuscated way. Most of that happens/happened right after launch.

You think corporations and the elite .01% support tariffs? It obviously was very unpopular with that class of society. The policy was aimed to help the working class of the country. You can argue that it was a piss poor way of doing so, but it's certainly not something that the elite class advocated for and getting rich off of.,

> They ruled that the specific statute Trump was using that allows him to "regulate imports" doesn't include regulating imports with tariffs.

Right, and thus because the Constitution gives congress the authority to levy tariffs, and the administration was usurping that authority, they violated the Constitution.

Then where are the hackers in this comment section calling out for the European Council to strike down European tariffs like the US supreme court did?

Where were they before Trump?

I don't think the administration cares about the appearance of impropriety.

It is flip flopping policy as far as it was here one day and struck down the next. That's what matters to people attempting to start something here. I should have stated I was not interested in arguing the actual rule process, you have 6-3 vote from the Supreme Court in your favor.

If the US really wanted to make a durable shift to manufacturing, presidential tariffs by fiat aren’t a good strategy anyway. Tariffs could be a small part of that strategy but they should be targeted, not broad, and enacted by congress so businesses have the kind of decades-long stability required to invest in factories that take years to pay off.

I was watching the Olympics. They have these really cool drones that follow the skiers down the slope at 80 kph. Chinese drones...

If only you knew how bad things really are.

You are not wrong. But you’re also not fully right. I think you don’t see the full scale of the economic tail those tariffs had.

He raised tariffs illegally by 10% for most countries immediately, which triggered a bunch of negative economic effects around the globe in those countries directly tied to the illegal raise of those tariffs by who represents the United States of America.

Damages have to be paid to those countries and their companies.

Because those costs occurred from an illegal action. We do agree that if you do something the highest court has deemed illegal, if it caused damages to any party as direct result of that illegal action, the entity who suffered those damages should be entitled to claim damages, right?

A lot of companies had to deal with the same problems.

You can’t really plan exporting into a country that raises different amounts of tariffs basically over night depending on how his majesty, the king of the free world has slept the night before.

Someone needs to plan with the new realities, workers need to put in more hours, external expertise needs to be hired, all costs have to be evaluated, partners in the US might no longer be able to clear their inventory, new business terms need to be negotiated.

Don’t get me started about the Logistics troubles, but all of the above are costs which wouldn’t occur if the president had gotten legal advise from the Supreme Court about his economic plans before he did something illegal. Right?

So do you follow the law?

If yes, your conclusion needs to be that the president needs to write a lot of Cheques and probably needs the autopen. Because it weren’t only us importers and customers suffering from the presidents illegal action.

.gov can write the check back to Americans then, and disband ICE, CBP, the DEA, and the ATF to pay for it.

You really believe that the incidence of taxation falls 100% on the buyer and never the seller? And you think those who have a more accurate view are "lying"?

Please learn a bit about the incidence of taxation: https://stantcheva.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum... The main models supporting your view is where consumer income is exogenous and all firm profits are redistributed to the representative consumer as a lump sum transfer: https://www.ief.es/docs/destacados/publicaciones/revistas/hp...

Please avoid simplistic beliefs and moral outrage for things as complex as trade policy. The people who say that the incidence of taxation falls heavily on sellers may just be better informed, particularly when listening to wall street earnings calls while simultaneously looking at the consumer price data.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL