This will be so in some cases, but there are extra steps in others.
e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge.
3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to reduce prices for their customers, but probably won't. They'll set prices according to what the market will support.
4) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to companies, like Cantor Fitzgerald, that bought the rights to tariff refunds.
5) Seller doesn't get any extra money back, so there's no money to refund to consumers.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Cantor Fitzgerald, while just one of the companies doing this, was formerly headed by Howard Lutnick and is currently owned and operated by his sons.
To the extent this is true, the entire thing could literally be a grift (I'm not saying Trump is smart enough to come up with this, just that people around him are, and he's grifty enough to go along with it):
1. Trump enacts the tariff, despite knowing it will be struck down.
2. The tariff extracts hundreds of billions from the economy.
3. Finance firms buy the potential refund for pennies on the dollar, knowing that Trump has no plan to defend the tariff.
4. The Supreme Court strikes down the tariff, as planned.
5. The finance firms profit on the refunds.
6. We are all poorer, Trump's cronies are richer.
The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund.
The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.
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.
It depends on the terms of the transaction. Most business-to-business transactions would have the importer responsible for duties, but many, maybe the majority of business-to-consumer transactions have taxes & duties covered by the exporter and included in the final price which would typically reflect the additional taxes & duties in the prices. In those case, the exporter would be the one refunded.
> The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer.
So it matters how we’re interpreting “paying”. One way to look at it is that if the cost was passed on to the consumer, the consumer paid it. The importer simply handed over the money.
and if so, do you really believe any importers who paid the tariff will further refund back to the consumer ? It's eventually a net win for the importer.
Or maybe this is used to justify a new emergency federal law that all purchases must be reported on your tax return, just in case the government ever needs to refund any illegally collected import taxes.
I think I'm kidding, but I'm not really sure anymore.
Indiana has sometimes required that for decades, though I think they finally adjusted the law a little after online purchases became popular.
Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax.
That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess.
And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.
Personally think it should not get refunded. There’s no sane way to get it back to its source. And no one group should be making profit from it. Best if it stays with the government like a federal forfeiture so in theory we all benefit from it as citizens , maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year.
Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits.
> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)
Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition.
Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.
It’s worse. Sellers raised prices citing tariffs. Not only does the seller get a one time bonus, the prices are now permanently raised as we all know prices are never coming down
> 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.
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 know the answer is practically ’no’, but it does still seem to me that the bureaucracy and companies that went along with this obviously illegal operation bear some culpability...)
I am certainly planning on seeking reimbursement from DHL and FedEx for the difference between the Trump rates, and the previous MFN rates. And if not, request charge backs via my credit card issuers.
Refunds are very complicated. How does the co even know who bought? As it goes thru several layers of distribution chain. Assuming they want to refund of course. I suppose they will claim they reduced prices (or more likely deferred price increases, how nice!)
And then not all tariff was absorbed by importer - some suppliers would have cut prices to compensate wholly or partly. We would never know as it is likely buried in various other discounts and contract terms not a line item that says "for tariff". Down the chain, others with margins could have done the same. That's probably why the inflation impact was less than scary scenarios painted by some economists.
Sometimes the consumer (more) directly pays when buying from overseas, most of the time you're right it gets rolled into the price at checkout if the company is large enough or just in larger prices buying in the US. I've had a few packages I had to pay extra import duties on with the UPS/FedEx agent fees tacked on top mostly kickstarters.
What I think is interesting is if there is going to be a legal distinction between a seller raising their prices 10% for the item itself vs. a seller charging a separate line item for tariffs/customs/duties.
I can see a situation where the courts find that a general price increase is simply they - an offer to sell at a price the buyer accepted regardless of the seller's motivation to increase pricing. However a line item that very clearly states that a charge is for duties paid might be treated differently?
Very curious to see what the legal minds have to say in this scenario. In a way it may punish companies for doing what many to most consumers feel was the "right" thing to do - add a surcharge that can easily be removed if the situation changed in the future vs. using a general increase as a new price anchor.
Unless there's only one seller, why won't one of them just lower their price slightly to gain a market share edge and increase their total profit (even if margins slightly drop)?
In October, I bought a $250 product from a Canadian company + about $30 shipping & taxes and thought I was good. A few weeks later, FedEx sends me an $92 bill for the duty that they had to pay. I just ignored it since I was never given that notice up front. If they really wanted it, they could have had the vendor contact me. But at least they're not getting that bit of profit now.
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.
I think people are getting ahead of themselves on the refund business. Refunds might be on the table, they also may not be. It may be a years long battle. Trump and co might put up enough resistance that many firms find it too costly to fight.
There are usually a few companies between the importer and the consumer. So the importers could only refund the business they sold it to and likely won't if nothing was specified in the purchase contract.
Though this is obviously a first so expect a billion lawsuits about this.
When I have bought things internationally, I have always been the one doing the importing. This means I paid some Trump taxes and I will get my money back.
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.
Why do we repeatedly say that tarrifs are passed off in full to the consumer in the form of higher prices? Isn't that as obviously wrong as the argument for them, that they're paid entirely by the other countries?
Is there a reason to believe, or evidence, that it's not a mixture of the two?
edit: I want to highlight esseph's reply has a link to evidence that last year's tarrifs were passed off 90% to consumers, which is exactly the type of info I was looking for.
"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."
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.
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 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.
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.
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%.
Does anyone have a good explanation on how supposedly other countries were paying the tariffs? If so, nothing would deter the american consumer from buying foreign?
That's Trump's new 10% tariff applied to most countries. There are some exceptions. Most of the extreme per-country tariffs are gone. For now, anyway. Trump may add Section 201 tariffs later, but those are per product category. What Trump can do in this mode doesn't include most of his per-country "deals".
Amusingly, the new 10% tariff doesn't apply until Feb 24th, so you have a few days to avoid it. All this expires July 24th, because the law being invoked here has a time limit unless Congress extends it.
> because the law being invoked here has a time limit unless Congress extends it.
Like many similar US laws it probably has a time limit expressed in lapsed Congressional days.
Heavy emphasis on "Congressional days".
Catch me up here, has the Congressional "clock" (count of lapsed days) been restarted since the current admin shut it down as almost the first order of business for 2025?
Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.
Is it still "legally" the first week of the 119th United States Congress 11 months later ?
This may not reflect the tariffs shipping and customs attempt to gather. Generally shipping companies just comply with what the customs agents say is required and at least publicly the Trump admin is saying they're going to continue collecting last I heard.
Great news for people who had to bend over backwards pretending this disruptive, nakedly corrupt behavior was "good, actually."
But unfortunately, there are other channels for them to effectively do the same thing, as discussed in oral arguments. So still not a major win for American manufacturers or consumers, I fear.
> Great news for people who had to bend over backwards pretending this disruptive, nakedly corrupt behavior was "good, actually."
Actually they’re still doing it. I saw it not 2 minutes after seeing this post initially. The justifications for why they were “good, actually” has gotten increasingly vague though.
Sure, but now SCOTUS can say they are not a rubber stamp for POTUS. "See, we just ruled against him. Sure, it's a case that doesn't really solve anything and only causes more chaos, 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.
The president doing horribly fascist things with ICE like obliterating habeas corpus? Using the military to murder people in the ocean without trial? That's fine.
Screwing with the money? Not okay.
See also how the prez is allowed to screw with any congressional appointees except the federal reserve.
The damage goes far beyond the wallets of business and consumers. The unilateral, arbitrary tariff setting has little do with money and everything to do with the power it gave Trump. And was one of the primary instruments used to destroy relationships with our foreign allies including our closes neighbor..
To that point it was always relative to the advantage it gained overall when used as leverage for negotiations, now the issue is what other forms of leverage remain? Whether the outcomes of the agreements are good or not is one thing but there’s room for the argument that perhaps tariffs are a better form of leverage when compared with other available options.
I don't think tariffs should be imposed capriciously at the President's whim.
But I do think tariffs are an appropriate policy tool that should be used to protect US companies against overseas competitors that get government subsidies or other unfair advantages: Low wages, safety regulations, worker protection, environmental rules, etc.
Yep, that's why you need to convince Congress of that fact, as has been done in the past. Tariffs absolutely make sense as a strategic tool. There is no strategy here.
I agree with this assessment. And I think that the way it's setup in the constitution is correct, that congress needs to ultimately create the tariffs rather than the president. Creating tariffs unilaterally should almost never happen.
The cover story for tarrifs was re-Industrialization. The facts are that they are used more as another rent seeking maneuver, a street rat style protection racket or a means to coerce. Sell the theory but do something else.
That's the issue: He used an emergency act passed in the 1970s designed for rapid response to other countries' "first strike" of economic hardship like the oil embargo.
Tariffs in general have not been touched at all, those that Congress wishes to pass. This is a ruling that the President cannot use the 1970s act to be a one-person economic warfare machine to the entire world when he doesn't like something.
It protects US compagnies at the expense of US consumers. Almost no economist think they are actually good for the economy, not even retaliatory tariffs.
Do you agree with countries doing the opposite to the US? When for example US tech is better than the local alternative but the countries create unfair advantages to the local alternatives?
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.
>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.”
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.
This has nothing to do with tariffs and everything to do with us companies hsving an unfair advantage or justnot following EU regulations. Or musk trying to interfere in our politics and supporting extreme right wing parties. Also us government having access to our cloud data, etc.
All our advertising money goes to the US to google/fb, because everyone is using them, not because they are inherently better at anything, for example.
We have laws explicitly for imposing tariffs for these reasons (like Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Trade Act of 1974)
The difference is they have to go through administrative procedure, and are subject to more judicial review to ensure administrative process was followed. Even if its a fig leaf in this administrative, its a tad slower with higher judicial oversight.
What Trump wants to do is impose tariffs on a whim using emergency powers where administrative procedure laws don't apply.
So the hope here: we have at least more predictability / stability in the tariff regime. But tariffs aren't going away
Maybe in rare cases, but for each of the various policy goals tariffs are used for, there are other kinds of targeted industrial policy that work better and cost less.
Tariffs are the most expensive way to try to onshore manufacturing. The cost per "job created" is astronomical usually. They incentivize corruption and black markets.
Even regular old subsidies are usually easier, cheaper, and less problematic
I agree with you, but it's a tool that should only be used very sparingly because tariffs can be incredibly difficult to get rid of. See for example the "chicken tax" for light trucks which was instituted in 1964 (because the Europeans tariffed US chicken exports).
This has the air of getting congratulated for getting shanked in an alley while running to the hospital in hopes of getting treated for appendicitis. A knife, after all, is an appropriate surgery tool.
Good news ! It is against the law (i.e., illegal) for a US President to impose tariffs (on a whim or otherwise) -- a US President doing so is doing so illegally and without constitutional authority!
When the US President commits crimes as the US President, he has absolute immunity from prosecution (otherwise, he might not be emboldened to break the law) so there is no judicial recourse, but the US Congress can still see the illegal activity and impeach and remove him from office to stop the execution of illegal activity. As our representatives within the US Government, they are responsible to us to enact our legislative outcomes. It appears they have determined that the illegal activity is what we wanted, or there would be articles of impeachment for these illegal acts.
The legislative branch can of course deliberately impose tariffs at any time for the reasons you listed.
Right. Most of the news articles don't link to the decision, which is worth reading.
It's a 6-3 decision. Not close.
Here's the actual decision:
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for
the Federal Circuit in case No. 25–250 is affirmed. The
judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in case No. 24–1287 is vacated, and the
case is remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
So what does that mean in terms of action?
It means this decision [1] is now live. The vacated decision was a stay, and that's now dead.
So the live decision is now: We affirm the CIT’s holding that the Trafficking and
Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders exceed the authority delegated to the President by IEEPA’s text. We also affirm the CIT’s grant of declaratory
relief that the orders are “invalid as contrary to law.”
"CIT" is the Court of International Trade. Their judgement [2], which was unanimous, is now live.
It reads:
"The court holds for the foregoing reasons that IEEPA does not authorize any of the
Worldwide, Retaliatory, or Trafficking Tariff Orders. The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff
Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means
of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders. This conclusion entitles Plaintiffs to judgment as a matter of law; as the court further finds no genuine dispute as to any material fact, summary judgment will enter against the United States. See USCIT R. 56. The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined."
So that last line is the current state: "The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined." Immediately, it appears.
A useful question for companies owed a refund is whether they can use their credit against the United States for other debts to the United States, including taxes.
”Based on two words separated by 16 others, the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. Those words cannot bear such weight.”
Zing! Surprisingly spicy writing for such a gravely serious body.
The Gorsuch concurring is quite the read, but wish more Americans internalized its final paragraph (excerpts below).
Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. ...
But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.
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.
Hmm, I read some of the decision, and now I'm not sure what to make of all of it.
When I came to the opinion from Jackson, J., I found it extremely compelling. He says this:
... But some of TWEA’s sections delegating this authority had lapsed, and “there [was] doubt as to the effectiveness of other sections.” Accordingly, Congress amended TWEA in 1941, adding the subsection that includes the “regulate ... importation” language on which the President relies today. The Reports explained Congress’s primary purpose for the 1941 amendment: shoring up the President’s ability to control foreign-owned property by maintaining and strengthening the “existing system of foreign property control (commonly known as freezing control).”
When Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977, limiting the circumstances under which the President could exercise his emergency authorities, it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. The other two relevant pieces of legislative history—the Senate and House Reports that accompanied IEEPA—demonstrate that Congress’s intent regarding the scope of this statutory language remained the same. As the Senate Report explained, Congress’s sole objective for the “regulate ... importation” subsection was to grant the President the emergency authority “to control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved.” The House Report likewise described IEEPA as empowering the President to “regulate or freeze any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”
However, then I read Kavanaugh, J. who writes the following:
In 1971, President Nixon imposed 10 percent tariffs on almost all foreign imports. He levied the tariffs under IEEPA’s predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), which similarly authorized the President to “regulate ... importation.” The Nixon tariffs were upheld in court.
When IEEPA was enacted in 1977 in the wake of the Nixon and Ford tariffs and the Algonquin decision, Congress and the public plainly would have understood that the power to “regulate ... importation” included tariffs. If Congress wanted to exclude tariffs from IEEPA, it surely would not have enacted the same broad “regulate ... importation” language that had just been used to justify major American tariffs on foreign imports.
And I also find this compelling.
To add onto this, Roberts, C. J. says: IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate ... importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.
This seems directly contradictory to Kavanaugh, J.'s dissent! Kavanaugh, J. claims that Nixon used the word “regulate” to impose tarrifs. And apparently the word isn't just in some random other statute — Nixon did so from TWEA, the predecessor of IEEPA: when Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977 it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. (from Jackson, J.) So the point that no President has read IEEPA to confer such power seems pretty weak, when Nixon apparently did so from TWEA.
I have no conclusion from this, but IMO both Jackson, J. and Kavanaugh, J. have pretty strong points in opposing directions.
Kavanaugh’s reasoning is that a wartime law, TWEA, can be congruent to a peacetime law, IEEPA. The rest of the court acknowledged that the President always had control of tariffs during war.
None of these seem to apply and I am not a lawyer, but if they do not apply then, why would the president have the power of taxation when that is given to the legislative branch not executive branch.
Not clear to me why these new tariffs would be on better footing than the last and the last never seemed to be on good footing.
It's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.
It seems likely to me the ruling took this long because John Roberts wanted to get a more unanimous ruling.
Additionally, the law in this case isn’t ill defined whatsoever. Alito, Thomas, and to a lesser extent Kavanaugh are just partisan hacks. For many years I wanted to believe they had a consistent and defensible legal viewpoint, even if I thought it was misguided. However the past six years have destroyed that notion. They’re barely even trying to justify themselves in most of these rulings; and via the shadow docket frequently deny us even that barest explanation.
> 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.
The dissent seems to be "Ignoring whether or not the President acted lawfully, it would sure create an awful big mess if we undid it. And he's gonna try again anyways, and maybe even succeed in that future attempt, creating an even bigger mess. So for these reasons, it shouldn't be undone."
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.
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.
It really isn't ill-defined at all. Both the constitution and the law allowing the president to impose tariffs for national security reasons is clear. There are just some partisan hacks on the Supreme Court.
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.
It’s one of the few things in the U.S. constitution that is not ill defined. Tariffs are very explicitly the prerogative of Congress.
The fact that the administration of tariffs is so much better defined than really anything else shouldn’t be surprising because tariffs is the proximate cause of the Revolutionary war.
It’s embarrassing that the 3 justices put their partisanship ahead of the clear language of the constitution and explicitly stated intentions of the founders.
Fully agree, but that's what happens when you keep piling laws on top of laws on top of laws and never go back and refactor. If I recall correctly, the case hinged on some vague wording in a semi-obscure law passed back in 1977.
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.
It kind of shows that the USA does not have that strong means against becoming a dictatorship. George Washington probably did not think through the problem of the superrich bribing the whole system into their own use cases to be had.
>apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it
That is not how the Supreme Court works. SCOTUS is a political body. Justices do one thing: cast votes. For any reason.
If they write an opinion it is merely their post hoc justification for their vote. Otherwise they do not have to explain anything. And when they do write an opinion it does not necessarily reflect the real reason for the way they voted.
Edit: Not sure why anyone is downvoting this comment. I was a trial attorney for 40+ years. If you believe what I posted is legally inaccurate, then provide a comment. But downvoting without explaining is ... just ... I don't know ... cowardly?
In normal democracies you have multiple parties, so there is a much better chance of creating a coalition around the government and force election/impeachment if the leadership goes rouge. The US system turned out to be as fragile as it looks.
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.
Two of the justices would be happy to let Trump get away with murder. It's not that the law is ill-defined so much as a few justices are extremely partisan. Happily, a quorum of saner heads came about in this instance.
Howard Lutnick and his sons are surely happy about this. It’s almost like Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, knew this would happen. His sons, at their firm Cantor Fitzgerald, have been offering a tariff refund product wherein they pay companies who are struggling with paying tariffs 20-30% of a potential refund, and if (as they did today) they get struck down, they pocket the 100% refund.
Meanwhile Pam Bondi's brother is a lawyer who's firm represents clients with cases against the justice department, and those cases keep getting dropped.
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...
I wouldn’t put anything past them, but my impression is that they were just acting as a middleman for this transaction and taking a fee, rather than making a directional bet one way or another. Hedge funds have certainly been buying a lot of tariff claims, giving businesses guaranteed money upfront and betting on this outcome. But for an investment bank like Cantor Fitzgerald that would be atypical.
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”.
Remember when a conflict of interest was so important that Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm, because heaven forbid, he accidentally made some money while president.
Like his peanut farm would unduly sway government peanut policy.
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.
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.
Yeah, he's gotta finance the payments to whoever the kiddie peddler du jour is somehow. Especially now that he can't just walk next door or steer his yacht towards a conveniently located island.
A witness also reported to the FBI that Lutnick and CF are engaged in massive fraud: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA012492...
Oh and he bought his house from Epstein for $10. Nothing to see here just a criminal admin fleecing you without even shame enough to try to hide it well.
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.
> a tariff refund product wherein they pay companies who are struggling with paying tariffs 20-30% of a potential refund
For what it’s worth, I’ve personally been doing this. Not in meaningful dollar amounts. And largely to help regional businesses stay afloat. But I paid their tariffs and bought, in return, a limited power of attorney and claim to any refunds.
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.
That’s an insane conflict of interest. His sons took over the firm? It was already bad that Lutnick took over in the first place. As I recall he sued the widow of Cantor to steal control of the company after Cantor died.
But I guess this is not very surprising. I am sure every friend and family member of Trump administration people made trades leading all those tariff announcements over the last year, while the rest of us got rocked by the chaos in the stock market.
“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.”
If the court establishes that this was a tax, how would they administer the refund considering it's impossible to disentangle absorbed tariffs by firms and those passed along to consumers?
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.
There's no scam too big or too small, from Trumpcoin's open bribery, to Secret Service paying 5x the GSA per diem rate to stay at Trump properties on duty.
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.
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?
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.
He is also surely happy the Trump administration no longer sees fit to investigate or pursue anyone with connections to Epstein. Previously Lutnick had lied about the extent of their relationship, yet even after the recent relevations he can simply wave them off.
What a profitable time for the Lutnicks, who are of course already fabulously wealthy. Our system really does reward the best people.
I've wondered from the beginning if the whole tariff thing wasn't basically an insider operation for import/export insiders to profit off of rate arbitrage, if not outright black market operations.
That's more sadistic than I had guessed.
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Lutnicks profit requires some 2nd order thinking. How Trump et al might profit off of import/export insider operations also requires some 2nd order thinking. My apologies for not spelling it out, although it should not take much imagination.
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 :-)
Readit News
1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices.
2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US government
3) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to the seller after this ruling
4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)
e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge.
3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to reduce prices for their customers, but probably won't. They'll set prices according to what the market will support.
4) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to companies, like Cantor Fitzgerald, that bought the rights to tariff refunds.
5) Seller doesn't get any extra money back, so there's no money to refund to consumers.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Cantor Fitzgerald, while just one of the companies doing this, was formerly headed by Howard Lutnick and is currently owned and operated by his sons.
The price the market supports depends on things like taxes and tariffs.
Why removing taxes lowers prices:
https://open.substack.com/pub/shonczinner/p/why-removing-tax...
Or is there another source for this claim?
The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.
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.
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.
So it matters how we’re interpreting “paying”. One way to look at it is that if the cost was passed on to the consumer, the consumer paid it. The importer simply handed over the money.
I think I'm kidding, but I'm not really sure anymore.
Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax.
That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess.
And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.
That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming
Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits.
> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)
Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition.
Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.
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...
(I know the answer is practically ’no’, but it does still seem to me that the bureaucracy and companies that went along with this obviously illegal operation bear some culpability...)
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.
I am certainly planning on seeking reimbursement from DHL and FedEx for the difference between the Trump rates, and the previous MFN rates. And if not, request charge backs via my credit card issuers.
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And then not all tariff was absorbed by importer - some suppliers would have cut prices to compensate wholly or partly. We would never know as it is likely buried in various other discounts and contract terms not a line item that says "for tariff". Down the chain, others with margins could have done the same. That's probably why the inflation impact was less than scary scenarios painted by some economists.
I can see a situation where the courts find that a general price increase is simply they - an offer to sell at a price the buyer accepted regardless of the seller's motivation to increase pricing. However a line item that very clearly states that a charge is for duties paid might be treated differently?
Very curious to see what the legal minds have to say in this scenario. In a way it may punish companies for doing what many to most consumers feel was the "right" thing to do - add a surcharge that can easily be removed if the situation changed in the future vs. using a general increase as a new price anchor.
Seller may not reduce the price as well. Thus, continues to keep the raised price due to tariffs as free profit.
You owe them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they withhold future packages to your address until you settle up.
If they’re smart, they set it up so you owe the government.
Not according to the current administration: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CODFD3j623E
According to them, China and others are paying the tariffs, so any refunds clearly have to go to China...
"Trump says China is paying for his tariffs" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-tru...
"Trump Incorrectly Has Insisted ‘China’s Paying the Tariffs’" - https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006661985/tr...
"Fact check: Trump and Vance keep falsely describing how tariffs work" - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump...
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Though this is obviously a first so expect a billion lawsuits about this.
Elections have consequences.
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Is there a reason to believe, or evidence, that it's not a mixture of the two?
edit: I want to highlight esseph's reply has a link to evidence that last year's tarrifs were passed off 90% to consumers, which is exactly the type of info I was looking for.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2026/02/15/consumers...
"Importers and consumers in the US bear 96 percent of the tariff burden."
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com/2026/02/20/trump-...
Amusingly, the new 10% tariff doesn't apply until Feb 24th, so you have a few days to avoid it. All this expires July 24th, because the law being invoked here has a time limit unless Congress extends it.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/02/impo...
Like many similar US laws it probably has a time limit expressed in lapsed Congressional days.
Heavy emphasis on "Congressional days".
Catch me up here, has the Congressional "clock" (count of lapsed days) been restarted since the current admin shut it down as almost the first order of business for 2025?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358343
Is it still "legally" the first week of the 119th United States Congress 11 months later ?But unfortunately, there are other channels for them to effectively do the same thing, as discussed in oral arguments. So still not a major win for American manufacturers or consumers, I fear.
Actually they’re still doing it. I saw it not 2 minutes after seeing this post initially. The justifications for why they were “good, actually” has gotten increasingly vague though.
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.
The president doing horribly fascist things with ICE like obliterating habeas corpus? Using the military to murder people in the ocean without trial? That's fine.
Screwing with the money? Not okay.
See also how the prez is allowed to screw with any congressional appointees except the federal reserve.
But I do think tariffs are an appropriate policy tool that should be used to protect US companies against overseas competitors that get government subsidies or other unfair advantages: Low wages, safety regulations, worker protection, environmental rules, etc.
Unless the money is fully accounted and restituted, I believe we can assume what the strategy is.
Tariffs in general have not been touched at all, those that Congress wishes to pass. This is a ruling that the President cannot use the 1970s act to be a one-person economic warfare machine to the entire world when he doesn't like something.
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.
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.”
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.
The difference is they have to go through administrative procedure, and are subject to more judicial review to ensure administrative process was followed. Even if its a fig leaf in this administrative, its a tad slower with higher judicial oversight.
What Trump wants to do is impose tariffs on a whim using emergency powers where administrative procedure laws don't apply.
So the hope here: we have at least more predictability / stability in the tariff regime. But tariffs aren't going away
it's about if the executive can impose them
Tariffs are the most expensive way to try to onshore manufacturing. The cost per "job created" is astronomical usually. They incentivize corruption and black markets.
Even regular old subsidies are usually easier, cheaper, and less problematic
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Trump's usage of tariffs is pretty damn dumb.
When the US President commits crimes as the US President, he has absolute immunity from prosecution (otherwise, he might not be emboldened to break the law) so there is no judicial recourse, but the US Congress can still see the illegal activity and impeach and remove him from office to stop the execution of illegal activity. As our representatives within the US Government, they are responsible to us to enact our legislative outcomes. It appears they have determined that the illegal activity is what we wanted, or there would be articles of impeachment for these illegal acts.
The legislative branch can of course deliberately impose tariffs at any time for the reasons you listed.
Full stop. It really is only about whether or not the president could do it.
That's all.
It's a 6-3 decision. Not close.
Here's the actual decision:
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in case No. 25–250 is affirmed. The judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in case No. 24–1287 is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
So what does that mean in terms of action?
It means this decision [1] is now live. The vacated decision was a stay, and that's now dead.
So the live decision is now: We affirm the CIT’s holding that the Trafficking and Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders exceed the authority delegated to the President by IEEPA’s text. We also affirm the CIT’s grant of declaratory relief that the orders are “invalid as contrary to law.”
"CIT" is the Court of International Trade. Their judgement [2], which was unanimous, is now live. It reads:
"The court holds for the foregoing reasons that IEEPA does not authorize any of the Worldwide, Retaliatory, or Trafficking Tariff Orders. The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders. This conclusion entitles Plaintiffs to judgment as a matter of law; as the court further finds no genuine dispute as to any material fact, summary judgment will enter against the United States. See USCIT R. 56. The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined."
So that last line is the current state: "The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined." Immediately, it appears.
A useful question for companies owed a refund is whether they can use their credit against the United States for other debts to the United States, including taxes.
[1] https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/25-1812.OPINIO...
[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.170...
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Zing! Surprisingly spicy writing for such a gravely serious body.
Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. ... But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.
When I came to the opinion from Jackson, J., I found it extremely compelling. He says this:
... But some of TWEA’s sections delegating this authority had lapsed, and “there [was] doubt as to the effectiveness of other sections.” Accordingly, Congress amended TWEA in 1941, adding the subsection that includes the “regulate ... importation” language on which the President relies today. The Reports explained Congress’s primary purpose for the 1941 amendment: shoring up the President’s ability to control foreign-owned property by maintaining and strengthening the “existing system of foreign property control (commonly known as freezing control).”
When Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977, limiting the circumstances under which the President could exercise his emergency authorities, it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. The other two relevant pieces of legislative history—the Senate and House Reports that accompanied IEEPA—demonstrate that Congress’s intent regarding the scope of this statutory language remained the same. As the Senate Report explained, Congress’s sole objective for the “regulate ... importation” subsection was to grant the President the emergency authority “to control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved.” The House Report likewise described IEEPA as empowering the President to “regulate or freeze any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”
However, then I read Kavanaugh, J. who writes the following:
In 1971, President Nixon imposed 10 percent tariffs on almost all foreign imports. He levied the tariffs under IEEPA’s predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), which similarly authorized the President to “regulate ... importation.” The Nixon tariffs were upheld in court.
When IEEPA was enacted in 1977 in the wake of the Nixon and Ford tariffs and the Algonquin decision, Congress and the public plainly would have understood that the power to “regulate ... importation” included tariffs. If Congress wanted to exclude tariffs from IEEPA, it surely would not have enacted the same broad “regulate ... importation” language that had just been used to justify major American tariffs on foreign imports.
And I also find this compelling.
To add onto this, Roberts, C. J. says: IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate ... importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.
This seems directly contradictory to Kavanaugh, J.'s dissent! Kavanaugh, J. claims that Nixon used the word “regulate” to impose tarrifs. And apparently the word isn't just in some random other statute — Nixon did so from TWEA, the predecessor of IEEPA: when Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977 it kept the “regulate ... importation” language from TWEA. (from Jackson, J.) So the point that no President has read IEEPA to confer such power seems pretty weak, when Nixon apparently did so from TWEA.
I have no conclusion from this, but IMO both Jackson, J. and Kavanaugh, J. have pretty strong points in opposing directions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/trump-orders-temporary-1...
> SEC. 122. BALANCE-OF-PAYMENTS AUTHORITY.
> (a) Whenever fundamental international payments problems
> require special import measures to restrict imports—
> (1) to deal with large and serious United States balanceof-payments deficits,
> (2) to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of
> the dollar in foreign exchange markets, or
> (3) to cooperate with other countries in correcting an international balance-> of-payments disequilibrium,
> the President shall proclaim, for a period not exceeding 150 days
> (unless such period is extended by Act of Congress)—
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10384/pdf/COMPS-10...
search for "SEC. 122." to find it quickly.
None of these seem to apply and I am not a lawyer, but if they do not apply then, why would the president have the power of taxation when that is given to the legislative branch not executive branch.
Not clear to me why these new tariffs would be on better footing than the last and the last never seemed to be on good footing.
I am curious, what do you see as the benefit of this style of taxation?
The Congress could solve this in a week. Impeachment and removal from office.
Additionally, the law in this case isn’t ill defined whatsoever. Alito, Thomas, and to a lesser extent Kavanaugh are just partisan hacks. For many years I wanted to believe they had a consistent and defensible legal viewpoint, even if I thought it was misguided. However the past six years have destroyed that notion. They’re barely even trying to justify themselves in most of these rulings; and via the shadow docket frequently deny us even that barest explanation.
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.
Curious if others have different readings.
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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.
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The fact that the administration of tariffs is so much better defined than really anything else shouldn’t be surprising because tariffs is the proximate cause of the Revolutionary war.
It’s embarrassing that the 3 justices put their partisanship ahead of the clear language of the constitution and explicitly stated intentions of the founders.
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[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.)
from the start of the "injury":
15 days to be ruled onhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe...
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That is not how the Supreme Court works. SCOTUS is a political body. Justices do one thing: cast votes. For any reason.
If they write an opinion it is merely their post hoc justification for their vote. Otherwise they do not have to explain anything. And when they do write an opinion it does not necessarily reflect the real reason for the way they voted.
Edit: Not sure why anyone is downvoting this comment. I was a trial attorney for 40+ years. If you believe what I posted is legally inaccurate, then provide a comment. But downvoting without explaining is ... just ... I don't know ... cowardly?
Like I've said before, if you can't tell whether it's a bot or a real person voting, it doesn't matter anyway.
Might as well be a bot either way.
corrective upvote made
Ultimately no system can't stop that if there is a societal culture that tolerates the drumbeat of authoritarianism and centralization of power.
'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants'
No, he can't impost tariffs on any country. He can only impose tariffs on American companies willing to import from any country.
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> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises
(which it does, and expounds upon)
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Make stupid laws, win stupid prizes.
It's almost like the legal system is designed so that you can get away with murder if you can afford enough lawyers.
It's kind of like pointing at any major codebase and arguing that it's "stupid" to have millions of lines of code.
https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-wa...
- https://www.newsweek.com/trump-doj-handling-pam-bondi-brothe...
- https://abcnews.com/US/doj-drops-charges-client-ag-pam-bondi...
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.
not sure why you'd give them any benefit of the doubt. they haven't earned it.
Like his peanut farm would unduly sway government peanut policy.
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.
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.
That's why it taxed the economy much worse than a legitimate President would do.
Why would they bother hiding it when the populace is apparently powerless to do anything about it?
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.
For what it’s worth, I’ve personally been doing this. Not in meaningful dollar amounts. And largely to help regional businesses stay afloat. But I paid their tariffs and bought, in return, a limited power of attorney and claim to any refunds.
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Seems more likely the administration orders everyone to ignore the court.
Even if the executive branch's actions stop here, there's still a lot of arguing in court to do over refunds.
https://archive.is/W6Gqy
But I guess this is not very surprising. I am sure every friend and family member of Trump administration people made trades leading all those tariff announcements over the last year, while the rest of us got rocked by the chaos in the stock market.
“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.”
Welcome to America.
This isn't even in the top 10 of corrupt activities our government officials undertaken in the past year.
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[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/30/new-epstein-...
Trump just gave himself a $10 billion dollar slush fund from taxpayers. Who stopped him? No one. This amount of money will buy you one great den.
Noem wants luxury jets from the taxpayer.
So. Much. Winning.
Had the Democrats ran a half decent candidate, they could easily have won. But they're just not capable of doing that.
Like the man said, I'm definitely tired of all the winning. Emoluments clause be damned.
What a profitable time for the Lutnicks, who are of course already fabulously wealthy. Our system really does reward the best people.
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That's more sadistic than I had guessed.
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Lutnicks profit requires some 2nd order thinking. How Trump et al might profit off of import/export insider operations also requires some 2nd order thinking. My apologies for not spelling it out, although it should not take much imagination.
Always seems to be in the right place and the right time