A Boring Dystopia

Actually it's worse! Because the current US secretary of Commerce, Howard Luttnick, and his sons went around to companies most impacted by the illegal tariffs, and said that they'd pay them a small amount of money now, for the rights to the full tariff refund later. Basically betting that the tariffs would be ruled illegal, and that there would be massive refunds issued. So they bought up the rights to millions of refunds, for pennies on the dollar, effectively leveraging their insider knowledge of the issue, in one of less blatant instances of corruption within this administration.

How do you stop this crap. That money could have paid for universal healthcare many times over.

Rob the poor to pay the rich USA mentality

I PAID THE TARRIFS.

But I did not vote for import fees.

They're all fine with redistribution of wealth, but only in one direction.

This is called wealth transfer, conservatives only like it when it goes from the bottom to the top.

People in USA: so are your import tariffs gone now? Have tariff related price increases gone back down? Or have businesses just decided to keep that free money too?

so glad the empire is destroying itself tho

It's actually even worse than just taxpayers paying businesses: Since the US doesn't have the tax revenue to pay the businesses, it will need to take out more debt to pay them. So the taxpayers will not only pay the businesses, but they will also pay interest. (That is, if you believe that the US will be able to stabilize its debt before defaulting. At the rate we're going, with the looter class taking US government funds, the US will end up defaulting before taxpayers have a chance to pay down the debt. To be clear, a default would be far worse than the austerity and/or tax increases required for taxpayers to pay down the debt.)

Who paid for the tariffs?

Who pays for the refund?

Isn't this redundant? The tariff is federal income. The refund is federal spending. The amount is (presumably) identical.

Ted Dansons Voice: Woah woah woah, we weren't promised to be Charlie Sheen-Grade winners.

It's been a big slow robbery the whole time.

Hell yeah... all that "tarrif money" from the first go-arounds is in trump's pocket. You don't think HE'S going to pay for his criminal act, do you?

Get the fuck out of here !!! You crazy person you.

A corporate stimmy!