What about the class action route, where the damage to the class is estimated and then everyone in the class gets an equal amount?
And dividends and stock buybacks and executive bonuses.
I was going more with “shit-eating grin”
Speaking of tariffs - AP News had a fact check of Trumps SotU statements, to include tariffs. They noted that the tariffs collected (from other countries, according to Trump) by the current administration amount to only 4% of the budget and could never replace income tax etc. What they failed to point out in their “fact check” is that the vast majority (90% by some estimates) of this money is NOT coming from other countries. It is a tax on Americans. That is the important part, IMHO, and they left it out. Has even the AP bought into this nonsense? Why don’t any of the interviewers of Trump or anyone else in the administration ask how, exactly, China is paying the billions and billions (or is it now trillions?) in tariffs? Bitcoin? Checks? Wire transfers? WTF is wrong with people who believe the outrght lie?
Isn’t it 100%? Is any tariff money coming from other countries?
Every dollar that hits the treasury comes from the importers, that’s true, but to the extent that the exporters have to shave their prices to continue making sales they are in effect paying a small portion of the tariffs. That is, money that would have otherwise ended up in their pockets is now in the hands of the treasury.
That isn’t the way I figure. Let’s say the US puts a tariff of 50% on widgets from Freedonia. Freedonia would normally charge the US importer $100 per widget, so the importer would pay $50. But Freedonia’s leader, Rufus T. Firefly, wants his country to keep selling widgets. He gets the manufacturer to knock the price down to $90, meaning the US would only collect $45 per widget in tariffs. The US importer pays $135 per widget rather than $150, the US collects $5 less, Freedonia’s manufacturer collects $10 less, and the US importer saves $15. The exporter isn’t paying the US a nickel.
Okay, so let’s take the state of affairs after a pre-tariff trade to be a zero point. The exporter has $100, the importer has the widget and -$100.
Post tariff, if we suppose the exporter knocked the price down to $90, the exporter has $90, the Treasury has $45, and the importer has -$135 and a widget. Relative to the zero point, the exporter is -$10, the importer is -$35, and the Treasury is +$45. So while all $45 of the Treasury’s money came from the importer, the importer is only -$35 from the base point.
I’d call that the exporter effectively paying a portion of the tariff.
I get the point and I can’t say you’re wrong. Good analysis.
As a point of reference, I am a small US manufacturer. My company imports its printed packaging from China and specialty wood from the EU. We paid about $25,000 in increased tariffs last year. The exporters did NOT discount their price to offset the Trump tariffs and we did NOT raise our prices. We absorbed the cost and had to forgo some needed web design and SEO. No doubt, we lost sales due to this (and our contractors lost $25,000 in income).
Some of our competitors who use more imported goods than us and work off a smaller margin and had no choice but to raise their prices. No doubt, they lost sales due to that.
Bitching about no refunds trickling down to the consumer is just the kind of grousing the Trump administration is hoping for.
Some U.S. companies ate the whole tariff. Some companies managed to raise prices by more than the tariff cost. If the Trump administration wants to spend time celebrating my posts, it can go ahead.
Do you have any cites about what percentage of companies did that or even a single documented case? Prices always go up eventually for a myriad of reasons not associated with tariffs.
As I mentioned above, in the case of Learning Resources, the $10 million bank loan to cover the tariffs comes with a higher interest rate than the govt is going to pay back. And the company had to switch manufacturing to other countries, which came with huge startup costs, retooling, etc. And they had to pay staff to work all this out instead of doing their normal duties. That’s just some of the extra costs. You can’t just look at the tariff amount alone.
No.
With tens of millions of price-setting business in the U.S., it seems to me an extremely safe guess that some do. But I have no percentage guess.
I agree that prices go up (and down) for a myriad of reasons.
Here’s why many U.S. businesses can absorb the tariffs for a while:
What does that show? The fact is, companies know exactly how much they paid in tariffs. They have the receipts. And part of the problem is illustrated by your link: the companies never know from day to day how much the rate is going to be. LR would order products when the tariffs were one rate, then find out when it reached the dock that the rate was now double. Or half.
Why don’t they ask “If China pays us when we put a tariff on their goods, who pays when China puts a tariff on our goods? Is Trump allowing China to tax Americans?”
Trump is already taxing Americans. Where is his yacht anyway? Or does he only travel by ‘donated’ golden jets?
He doesn’t give interviews to those that don’t play the game.
True. I mean ask themselves - but Trump supporters apparently don’t ask themselves questions like that.
They mentally shut down. I’ve watched it happen in real time the few occasions I’ve had to speak with Trump supporters I know. It’s like something broke and they simply couldn’t bring themselves to engage with the truth.
Why aren’t they talking about all the tariff money we are going to have to repay to China?