The Trump tariffs scam in a nutshell

[Ol Janx Spirit]

18. Exactly--it is a potential windfall for companies that passed the tariffs straight on the the consumers.

The records that the government has account for every cent a company paid in import taxes. That will be easy to refund--and there are already mechanisms in place to do so.

Not every company passed those tariffs on, however--so they will only be made whole for their initial tariff tax costs.

But if your company did pass those costs on and you get a refund for what you paid then it's just a windfall for you unless there is a requirement to somehow pay it back to the consumers--a process that would probably cost far more than it is worth if you sell lots of products to consumers through retailers.

So, you paid the tariff tax; you recouped the tariff tax from your customer; and now you get a big fat check for the tariff tax you paid that you get to keep....

Calculating what an individual consumer paid in tariff taxes and additional sales tax, etc., is basically impossible.

Also, if a tariff tax raised the price of a non-tariffed item--which is of course the way it works when your competitor suddenly has to raise their price and you can raise yours to just a hair under that--then how can that cost to consumers possibly be calculated?

No, as always, the easiest thing to do will be to shower corporations with money that they can do whatever they want with--most likely giving it straight to executives as always.

And of course, the prices aren't coming down on either the tariff-impacted products or the ones that just went up because they could any time soon....