this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026

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309

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (lemmy.world)

submitted 12 hours ago by laurenceOfSuburbia@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.world

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 8 points 3 hours ago

Fines like this should go to the consumer, but that's impossible, so they should go into the America First Fund (irony intended), which be the seed money to provide the initial funding for all the social programs we need to start - healthcare, college/trade, student loan forgiveness, pre-k, UBI, etc.

As we investigate and prosecute MAGA crimes, any fines and confiscations, which should be harsh (including the confiscation of entire estates of treasonous families like the Trumps or the Ellisons), should be put into the America First Fund. The level of the fund should be mentioned in the evening news every night. Rich people can take note of the Dow, and workers can take note of the America First Fund.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

They should go to Free Parking, and if someone happens to land directly on the square, they get the refunds. This is just a massive game of Monopoly, ain't it?

[–] Archimedes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago

Go straight to jail.

[–] Flipper@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Fun fact. That is not in the rules for monopoly. Of included it drags out the length of the game.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Yes, it's a common house rule not an official one (tho modern versions of the game do include this and other optional rules in the booklet). But it rarely, if ever, draws out the length of the game. There's only just under 3% of a chance to even land on Free Parking.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 13 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Americans will put up with anything. Fucking losers

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's ironic

They have to work so hard to survive, and yet, when it comes to thinking, they're incredibly lazy

I genuinely pity them, because I know that as a society, they're only in such a situation because they're beaten into submission and apathy

They're placated by unbelievable convenience, having everything an hour's delivery away, and numbed to the fact that that means someone is slaving (I use that term deliberately) for their laziness

The mental gymnastics to justify every part of that shitty, exploitative excuse for a society are endless

And when they see other cultures, where we are actually free, they point and laugh, because they are too ignorant to understand

I spend a lot of time in 'Murica, under duress

I hate the place, I see the cruelty and ignorance, and I would gladly offer asylum to those who deserve it, but even amongst the relatively civilised, that's a small number

[–] Flower@sh.itjust.works 2 points 27 minutes ago (1 children)

They've been trained from a very young age to never question the system. Pledge of allegiance before classes. Anthem before every match. Flags everywhere. Hollywood teaching everyone America will save the world yet again. It's very hard and impossible for many to break that programming.

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

Oh, I know it

Even those who move to civilised countries still struggle to break the chains sometimes

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 hours ago

They are quite pathetic. All these decades of saber rattling and pleasuring themselves to the fantasy of American freedom and democracy only to be led passively by the collar into their prison cells.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

as long as there things like tiktok, amazon, youtube,etc. yes. and many enough of a income to have creature comforts.

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 2 points 2 hours ago

As long as i can have my 5 dollar burger for 20 dollars delivered home by a guy who makes no money, it's all good

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 47 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

If you, as a consumer, directly paid one of the illegal tariffs, you can get a refund via the shipper who acted as an agent for you.

For example, here's the form if you shipped something over the border using UPS and paid an illegal tariff to get it released from customs.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 17 minutes ago

Yes, technically the truth. In practice the vast vast majority of consumers bought from a business that imported the item. So it's good to highlight people have options, but the broad point of the post stands, that the businesses have the option of pocketing the difference and most of them seem to be taking that option.

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 16 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Neat. I paid a business that forwarded the costs to me. Who do I appeal to?

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

Depends probably on the nature of what "forwarded the costs" means.

If the business collected the costs from you and then forwarded them to CBP while acting as your agent, then you can demand a refund from them or sue them.

If you agreed to purchase goods for one price while also agreeing to pay a separate "tariff reimbursement fee" in exchange for purchasing the goods, you're probably shit out of luck.

Various shades in between might be arguable or litigatable one way or another.

[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Does this mean UPS is going to stop sending me demand letters for extra money on a thing I already bought, paid for and received?

I keep wondering if they’ll escalate, but I’m refusing on principle.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

If you already received your item(s) and you don't immediately need to do any more business with them, it sounds like they don't have a lot of leverage to get you to pay.

Sounds like that might have been a screw up on their part.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That doesn’t matter if you paid inflated prices on already imported goods.

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 0 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, the comment conveniently seems to forget that most people paid tariff costs not by directly importing something, but by simply buying the thing at a tariff inflated price in a store.

There's no refund for those, and that is where the largest part of tariff costs has been paid.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 20 points 11 hours ago (5 children)

I'm not sure what other system is even conceivably possible in the general case. There's no straightforward universal relationship between tariffs paid by businesses and prices paid by the customers of those businesses.

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago

The system would be not having a lunatic who implements tariffs at a whim and based purely on insider speculation and temper tantrums.

It would at least be a start.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I think the best system would be not to allow tariffs to be illegally implemented in the first place. But I realize that's asking a lot.

[–] quarkquasar@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Sounds very unAmerican.

How about, instead, all tariffs money paid go directly to rich, land-owning white men?

Now that's closer to the American that I know.

[–] DuncanTheDrunk@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I dream of having a functional government. I know everywhere has issues, but rule by EO from a wannabe dictator is tiring.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 10 points 9 hours ago

We could at least not have taxpayers foot the bill for businesses to get free money.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Take the total tariff income, divide it by the number of people in the country, and send out the checks.

It's the ONLY legitimate way to handle it.

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

From a fairness point of view, for non essential goods, if you paid higher prices with the tariffs you would also have paid it without the tariffs, so you weren't really harmed by it.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Essential and non-essential are almost meaningless distinctions for most goods people use on a daily basis. I could LIVE on beans and water. Do I NEED toothpaste? Aspirin? How much I allowed to enjoy something before it's a non-essential good?

People paid more for something because they were forced to, and it wasn't for any economically necessary reason. Nitpicking the necessity of the good is a cheap excuse to do nothing, not a gotcha.

[–] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

That sounds fair in theory, but would not hold up as soon as the first person felt slighted and challenged those terms in court.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Let them. It's better than "nobody will let it be fair so we won't even try."

[–] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

There were some businesses passing the fees on directly to the end consumer via tariff implementation fees, but unless you have something like that itemized on an invoice, I believe you would be correct.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

A business that passed 100% of the tariffs on to consumers via higher prices could still be worse off after getting a refund than it would have been if there never had been tariffs, if demand is elastic enough, so I'm not sure even that sort of data could resolve the question of who deserves what.

[–] thenextguy@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Those halftone rosettes bring me back to my printing days.

[–] marduk@lemmy.today 5 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Good band name

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[+] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world -10 points 4 hours ago (5 children)

Because businesses are the ones that pay the tariff, not customers of the business. Did the extra tariffs give some companies an excuse to raise prices? Definitely. Does that mean the customer deserves a refund? Definitely not.

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Why on Earth would that not mean the customer deserves a refund? The entire cost of the tariffs has been placed on the customer. No business sold their imported goods at the same price after having paid the tariff fees, they all raised their prices.

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago

Because the customer didn’t pay the tariff, the business did - unless of course the business flat out added a “tariff surcharge” or something of the like to the total that the customer can see.

Increasing the cost of an item by the amount of the tariff is not the same as making the customer directly pay the tariff. The business was charged the tariff. They were invoiced and they paid it. The customer didn’t. The customer just bought an item at shelf price.

[–] MrShankles@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

You sweet summer child

So you're saying businesses should now cut deep discounts for buyers, because the (already imported) products' tariffs have been paid (AND the business is being refunded for it). Are they going to drop prices now? Are they acting upon market pressures or taking advantage/manipulating them?

If you think a wealth-class has to pay any mind to the invisible hand of the free market... I've got a nice ass bridge to sell ya, at a tarrif-free + ultra-discounted price!

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 2 points 7 minutes ago

You’re just making shit up.

I’m saying that the business is the one who was invoiced for the tariff. The customer wasn’t. The business increased the price to cover their extra cost, probably even added some extra profit on top as well, but that still doesn’t mean the customer actually paid the tariff. They didn’t. The tariff is paid on import, not sale.

[–] thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Business has to pay tariffs

Business raises price to offset tariffs

Customer pays increased price

Tariffs are deemed illegal

Business receives refunds for tariffs

Customer pays the refund via taxes

How is this anything but a transfer of wealth from citizens (the customers) to businesses?

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago

I mean, simply buying anything from a business is a “transfer of wealth from citizens (the customers) to businesses”, isn’t it?

[–] ab60753@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yes.... buuuut they forward that cost to the consumers. The buisneses dont go:"Wops, we need to pay more for items, lets keep the prices the same for the consumers." They increse the cost for the consumers.

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 2 points 14 minutes ago

Sure, but the customer isn’t paying the tariff. The customer is just paying more for a product. The business is paying the tariff.

It’s a “technically correct” thing, sure, but it’s why customers aren’t owed the refund. Businesses can increase prices whenever they want.

[–] Epzillon@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

Correct me if im wrong. If businesses raise their prices to reduce the impact of tariffs on profits then the person actually paying the tariff (atleast to some extent) is the end customer, no? Is it not then only fair for the person who actually paid for this to be compensated appropriately when it is deemed unconstitutional?

To me it seems insane that the people who already tossed away the problem further down the chain is to be compensated at all when they are not the ones who have primarily suffered the effects of it. Even if they where first in line to deal with it.

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 1 points 16 minutes ago

Unless they specifically included a new tariff fee or charge, they’re just charging the price they think people will pay.

[–] MrShankles@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

And then the refunds come from public tax dollars. So the customer has paid the unconstitutional tariffs twice. It's a blatant transfer of wealth upwards, no other way to really cut it

[–] Epzillon@lemmy.world 1 points 41 minutes ago

I did not specify where the money comes from. But you are correct in that scenario. However, it would not necessarily have to go that route. If a company pays the government for tariffs, then proceed to get that money back, that money should then be returned to the end-customer that in the meanwhile has paid more. I fall to see how this is paid by public tax money although I am also not american nor do I know the specifics of the US tax system.

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