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.
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!”