In what is to be the biggest repayment programme in history, companies can apply online for money they were charged under the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs - plus interest - to be returned.
The US Court of International Trade in March ordered customs officials to refund the more than $160bn (£121bn) the government had collected, putting roughly 330,000 importers in a position to potentially win back some money.
But some individual consumers, who were hit by the tariffs indirectly through higher prices, are not expected to be compensated.
Which means we get to pay for it twice, Xcellent™
Smells a lot like the COVID relief shit. If you know someone, or have an inside track on the process, you get tariff relief. Pure corruption.
Its yet another mechanism to squeeze from us, then give that to large companies owned by rich assholes.
They never figure out a way to not take our money or to take it from big companies and give it to us. And money doesn’t come out of the ground. Its our labor! They are stealing our work hours.
They’re stealing our lives.
just go take shit that you want. liberate these stores and companies from their garbage.
Working as expected.
Oh boy, this means prices will go down again! Oh wait no… companies are greedy and the current prices are the new norm.
Interesting thing is that when the tariffs were installed and businesses sued for collection to be deferred until after their legality was determined, the government argued that it would be difficult for them to recover monies not paid and trivial for them to automatically issue refunds since they’d have all the data in their systems.
So the tariffs were ruled illegal, and the government immediately pivoted to, “Well, actually, it’s going to be really hard for us to process the data and figure out how much we owe to whom, can’t we just keep it?” When told No, they then said, “Well, we’re not going to figure it out, you have to do it!”
So now all the businesses who got impacted have to go through all their records and figure out which good la were subjected to which tariffs (since not all the tariffs were ruled illegal), how much they paid in tariffs, then submit their data with all the backup documentation for government approval.
The government is tearing the entire thing kind of like manufacturers who offer a rebate: they make it clunky and inefficient and loaded with caveats and terms, and they know they’ll be able to keep a bunch of money because some people won’t bother, or won’t have the papers, or will be too busy and miss a deadline, etc.
But anyway, I thought it was cute how they immediately pivoted from “it’ll be trivial for us to refund” to “ackshually, this is really hard, you do it!”
when has the peasant class ever benefited
