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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
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.
Neat. I paid a business that forwarded the costs to me. Who do I appeal to?
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.
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.
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.
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.
We pay. Then we pay again.
It's as simple as that and just as fucked up. Our so-called government does not work for us.
"Pay to play? You mean the peasants get to play? Why?"
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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.
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.
I dream of having a functional government. I know everywhere has issues, but rule by EO from a wannabe dictator is tiring.
We could at least not have taxpayers foot the bill for businesses to get free money.
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.
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.
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.
Let's be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They'd waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.
But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it's pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They've already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.
It's money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we'll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.
Man for a second I thought you were serious and was getting my pitchfork ready. Bravo.
I ordered a pair of boots from Mexico, they were shipped with all of the correct paperwork and should not have been tariffed at all. It added ~$60 to the original cost of $170.
When you submit a tariff refund request they warn you multiple times that if your submission is rejected you will be charged $100 per submission. It can be rejected for making a mistake on the paperwork even if they find the tariff was applied incorrectly. I almost didn't submit for it, and a lot of people won't but I decided to risk it. That was a few months ago and I still haven't heard back.
And you never will. Thanks for playing The Decline of Democracy and Sanity.
Americans will put up with anything. Fucking losers
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
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.
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.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany moment now....
... it's going to start to trickle down.
I kicked a trumper out of my D&D group after I finally got of tolerating his shit. He thought Trump would be better for our economy. No regrets.
This is why I can't be angry at regular criminals, they're just mimicking the world they see at the top.
They should go to Free Parking, and if someone happens to land directly on the square, they get the refunds. Life is just a massive game of Monopoly, ain't it?
This was so obvious that anyone paying attention could see this coming a mile away. I'm probably the unpopular opinion, but I think the government should have just not issued any refunds. I would rather the government get funds to potentially use for social welfare than to give it back to businesses. The only problem is that would create an incentive for the government to try it again for another quick payday. Some mechanism would have to be put into place to stop this. Take away the power from the president to issue tarrifs on his own. Which we should probably do anyway.
The civilised world has always sneered at 'Murica
But now we look upon the disaster with great pity for those who have been unfortunately born there who deserve better