Bait and Re-Bait

THE MORNING RANT: Any Refund of Tariffs Already Collected Should Go to Taxpayers, not Businesses—Buck Throckmorton, via Ace of Spades HQ:

“… Businesses that actually remitted the tariff payments on their imported goods are now demanding those tariffs be refunded to them:

“Businesses Push for Tariff Refunds as Trump Aides Hint at Fight to Come” [NY Times – 02/25/2026]:

"Now that the president has suffered such a stinging defeat, major businesses including Dyson, FedEx and L’Oreal have filed an early barrage of lawsuits in search of hefty tariff payouts.

At stake is more than $100 billion in revenue collected over the past year under a roster of tariffs that the Supreme Court invalidated last week. While a defiant Mr. Trump has since taken steps to try to revive the duties, he still faces the prospect that the money collected from his past tariffs might have to be paid back.

So far, roughly 900 claims seeking those refunds have been filed in federal court, according to the Liberty Justice Center, a legal group that represented some of the small businesses in the lawsuit that reached the nation’s justices."

Since the free traders have so persistently argued that “Tariffs are a tax on consumers,” why should the businesses involved in importing goods be entitled to any tariff refunds? I thought we the consumers were the ones who paid those tariffs, not the businesses or their overseas suppliers.

Here’s an idea on how we could resolve the refund of these contested tariffs to consumers – a tariff dividend from the government to taxpayers, just like President Trump proposed.” …….

heh heh

I like it.