In all honesty, anyone with two braincells knew this was exactly what was going to happen. I called it as soon as Trump won the election. The unilateral tariffs were illegal and they were going to always get paid back to the companies who directly paid them, regardless of whether they passed the cost on to consumers or not.
Yet voters still chose to reelect Trump. Hard to feel any sympathy. Nothing to blame but their own ignorance.
Tarrifs were a way to increase taxes on poor people - blame someone else and make money for Trump and his Allies through 3 ways - bribes from the other country - “hey leader of Europe nice economy you have here - it’d be a shame if I were to break it. If you secretly buy my crypto I’ll lower it
And a way to have his Allies buy up tariff dollars when they are overturned
Lastly if helps the stock market because the companies aren’t giving that money back. And he’s bought more stocks than any other president.
Everything Trump does is for himself. If his allies get something. - it’s so they pay him in some other way.
I know a Texan, and last week he was singing the blues for the liquor industry, how people are being laid off, farmers can't get cheap feed (I guess it's a by-product of the booze industry; I don't know), etc, etc, etc. Boo hoo hoo.
When I said that I can't begin to feel sorry for them, since all of the owners and pretty much all of the employees voted for Trump, he was aghast; where was my compassion? Hey, they wanted it; they got it. "Yeah, but people didn't understand what tariffs would cause!"
The world punishes people for their ignorance all the time. I feel bad for people who did their part and voted against this, but the rest can eat shit. I'm sitting here in British Columbia, watching mill after mill close due to this...
I'm supposed to feel bad for people who voted for their jobs to disappear?
No worries. At some point the new tariffs will be rescinded and another round of bonus cheques sent to businesses. Some politicians may even buy the refunds for pennies on the dollar prior before hand. So much winning, but it’s the people losing.
The only move was to make large purchases, if you were able to, before tariffs and "inflation", hit prices. A person can't outrun those kind of corporate hikes and the long term instability caused by this admin, but maybe a person could save a couple bucks by getting a new laptop or car or what have you before the nonsense took hold.
I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if we find out down the road that this was the intent all along. Almost everything else Trump has done has been to enrich either himself or his billionaire buddies.
This put billions of dollars of profit directly into some of the biggest companies in America, with the dividends being paid to the shareholders.
No one feels crazy than being in the group of people who actually looked into Project 2025. I am still laying out what will happen to people and they’re still telling me it couldn’t happened.
When tariffs were imposed, corporations passed 100% of the price hikes directly to everyday consumers. Now that refunds are being paid out, those billions stay right in corporate accounts and stock buybacks while consumers get zero relief
Trumps design to keep corporate happy while he steals from the American people. He gets off on little kids and stealing whatever he can from tax payers to enrich himself or pay off his cronies.
I think that gives Trump too much credit. He doesn't have the intelligence to plan a scheme that long. It's more so that he just did something impulsive and it worked out in corporations' favor because that's just how our system is set up. Or at the very least, the scheme was cooked up by someone smarter close to Trump, presented to him, and he just said OK.
It was cooked up as a scheme to make corporations kiss the ring for tariff exemptions all while allowing him to do some insider trading. The tariff refunds going back to corporations was likely a convenient exit plan that was thought through but not the primary intention.
Rest assured he did plan far enough ahead to make sure there was a 0% chance of consumers benefitting at the expense of corporations.
one of those things where no matter how it panned out, the corporations could profit from it. Tariff? Pass the price onto consumers. Still making profit. Tariff refund? Pure unadulterated profit. Shrinking product size and raising prices? Believe it or not, still more profit.
Don’t forget that Howard Lutnick’s son (who took over leadership of daddy’s firm) bought the rights to those refunds from many corporations for Pennie’s on the dollar last year
And even with the tariffs being declared illegal, none of those prices are ever going back down, so Trump essentially handed corporations a "legitimate" reason to permanently price gouge.
You are either extremely naive or have a prebuilt assumption that everyday customers of these companies own their stock already and then would benefit from the stock price going up.
I would argue that this argument is an attempt at a semantical bait and switch.
When you say stock buybacks benefit consumers, the assumed meaning of consumers is, 'consumers at large.'
However, what you mean is that, it actually just benefits an extremely narrow subset of people, and since all people are technically consumers, therefore it benefits people who are consumers -- consumers.
No one is arguing against that.
People are saying that consumers at large -- people who might have paid inflated prices for goods offered by the company -- will not benefit from tariff refunds or stock buybacks.
Yeah but stock holders is a better term to use because it doesn’t help consumers as a whole, like the price of eggs going down for example. It only benefits stock holders. A lot of consumers don’t have the capital to benefit from stock buybacks
You don’t need to fuck around with murky language and fake words when we have these things called definitions of words.
Consumers refers to the people who paid the tariffs by co aiming the good or product.
Not paid into the company. I can’t believe I’m wasting my time on this but you can imagine most investors in a broad fund will never buy a single good or service from the companies invested.
All stock holders are consumers. Not all consumers are stock holders.
Including all accounts and retirement the median American has about $52,000 tied to the market. Direct stock investments is $15k, the bottom 50% of all investors is $12k. Only around 60% of all Americans own stock. This skews so that the more wealthy you are the more likely you are to be invested.
So yeah, doing some quick math & checking some studies, cost of living for an American household is up $1,000 to $1,7000 ytd from tariffs alone. STRICTLY tariffs.
Actual YTD market growth is roughly 7.7% after we remove inflation from the nominal return. 15.5% for the trailing one year real.
So let’s break it down an above average (financially) American family that still fits into the bottom 50% of all investors.
$12k invested (more than most Americans). At 22.3% aggregate stock growth. After we factor in federal taxes, cost of living increases & tariff impacts, the impact on the median American family is….
$304.94 per parent or $609.88 for the entire household.
So your median household within the subset that can actually participate saw growth of barely over $600.
People below that (40% of all Americans & those worse off in general) actually saw their purchasing power decrease.
> getting distributed from the company to individuals
I'm curious what mechanism you're thinking of for distribution and which individuals. I'm asking in good faith because I just don't see what you're seeing.
I’ll correct a few things, because based on these comments it sounds like you may be deeply confused and misled by your understanding of corporate law, shareholder primacy, stock buyback function & measured statistically significant results. I won’t bore you with figures, but here it is eli5 as best I can, because all of your statements assume fiduciary duty does not exist & rose colored wishful thinking is blatantly separate from fact.
“large corporations passed the vast majority of costs onto consumers. Very few absorbed costs. This behavior of absorbing costs does not happen in the overwhelming majority of public companies because companies have responsibility to shareholders before employees, customers or society at large. This has been precedent across America since Dodge Brothers V Ford.”
“Since the 1990’s, the amount of stock buybacks has increased drastically. In 1998 total stock repurchases surpassed cash dividends paid out. This trend has continued. Why is this done? It increases earning per share which many executives pay is based on, enhances stock market performance & allows those invested to avoid immediate taxation on their gains by repurchasing instead of receiving dividends. All of these actions, behaviors & regulations set an environment where corporations & the extremely wealthy retain the vast majority of benefit.”
As such, stock buybacks in absolutely no way, shape or form primarily benefits or provides relief for consumers.
Again: eli5. More than happy to break out the graphs, charts & statistics lectures until your eyes glaze over. Let’s n, please.
This is where class action lawsuits have to come into the picture. The lawyers will then claim massive chunks of the awards, but that's better than the corporations keeping it.
But the only way to set SOME sort of accountability is to do it. The business may not care about your $17, but they WILL care about cutting hundreds of thousands of $17 checks, legal fees, etc. You may not get YOUR fair share, but if the businesses get hurt bad enough, they shouldn't repeat the actions if the penalty is high enough to be a deterrent.
Except for the fact that whether the businesses choose to repeat their “actions” or not is irrelevant. This was a state sponsored grift through which Donald Trump took money out of the pockets of millions of Americans and handed it directly to large corporations to enrich his wealthy loyalists
The businesses could have pushed back against it. You make it sound like they were innocent bystanders who just had money thrown at them. They still needed to be involved somehow. Were they the entire force behind it? Of course not. But if you're going to try and correct something, you need to go after ALL involved parties.
The tariff refunds will need to go back to who paid the tariffs, in these cases it's these companies. People should be able to get back the tariff where they paid it directly, but if they paid it indirectly through increased prices when purchasing something in the US, I don't see any lawsuit working.
“Nintendo or one of its retailers set a price for each product, and consumers decided whether that price was worth paying,” Nintendo’s attorneys wrote. “Those who bought Nintendo’s products received exactly what they bargained and paid for: a console, game and/or accessory at a price to which both parties agreed.”
Not saying it’s right, but I’m not sure how effective class actions would be given the ones already filed and the arguments against them.
The basis would be, "Yes, you raised the prices because you had to pay tariffs. Then we paid the raised price, effectively negating the tariff. Now you are getting a tariff rebate designed to repay you for the costs of the tariff we already repaid for you by buying a product with that tariff factored in to the price."
Would that be successful? Dunno. If the rebates are for unsold product or for products sold without passing the tariff to the consumer, then they would be unsuccessful. If they are a blanket refund for everything, then the chances of lawsuits go up.
A company can raise or lower prices however they want at any time. There’s nothing illegal about raising prices temporarily to cover temporarily increased costs like tariffs, regardless of the reasoning or if those costs were eventually recouped
That’s the only path they’ve given us and it’s actual garbage. It’s fucking sad that the only mechanism we have against them funneling our money to the top is another way to funnel yet another smaller chunk of our money through some pitiful middle men who do little and gain all the reward while we get actual pennies.
There is nothing to litigate. The companies paid the tariffs, not the consumers. The cost, in most cases, was passed on the consumer but that was the choice of the company to raise prices, and the choice of the consumer to purchase the product at an increased price
How is it better? On average less than 10% of class action suit payouts reach the victims. Money just get redistributed from rich on one side to rich on the other. Lawyers get rich, interested parties get rich, average people get gauged.
The ballroom, the reflecting pool, the Qatari 747, the "Weaponization" slush fund, the IRS settlement he gifted himself as plaintiff, defendant and arbiter - these things cost money.
The ~35million my company got in tariff refunds was immediately put into stock buybacks.
Considering I own maybe a dozen shares of my company thru the ESOP, I got a couple pennies in unrealized gains…..
I think companies are getting the refunds because they filed a suit over the tariffs being illegal. Not saying it’s fair but I think that is how it worked out.
Being unironic? Employment rates and asset prices going up. It’s a shit reason, but since most middle-aged citizens in the US have a retirement investment vehicle, pension, or money in social security, it’s supposed to buttress the digital numbers in asset portfolios that drive those investment vehicles.
Social Security is exclusively invested in non-marketable special issue securities issued by the Treasury. Tariff refunds go to non-governmental entities only, thus not benefitting the relevant trust funds for social security.
Huh, I stand corrected. I always thought there was a threshold where if you’re older, collect SS, and sell stock, your gross income changes and thus you have to pay a tax on the social security entitlements you collect.
Employment rates can't be trusted because of the way they're tabulated. Assets belong to Wall Street, not Main Street (median 401 (k) balance is $38K). Social Security does not invest in market assets. Pensions basically don't exist anymore.
And prices have not come down.
We the people don't get our cut. That's not how the system is designed to work. It is designed to extract money from those with less and give it to those with more. Those with more own approximately 97% of the wealth and also receive about 97 cents of every new dollar of wealth that is created.
Just because the median of a 401k is 38k per whatever metric you’re measuring doesn’t mean the value is not going to be elevated after reports of companies getting tariff money back. Pensions are thinning across the board, yeah, but to say they aren’t important or flat out don’t exist currently is disingenuous.
You’ll get no argument from me when it comes to the metrics though. Employment rates are wholly distorted with how they are calculated. While Wall Street is gaining the lion’s share of the gains, a lot of people on Main Street are invested into numerous index funds which are at all time highs. Again, it’s a shit reason, like I mentioned before in my previous post, but companies gaining billions of dollars do benefit a number of people who are middle class.
Nah it was dead wrong. I had a misstep on how Social Security was funded and taxed for a minute. Another commenter clarifed it.
“Not true for most middle-aged Americans.” Are we making the argument that many middle-aged Americans don’t have a benefits plan they pay into for retirement? 401ks, ROTH IRAs, pensions, and other investment vehicles like that are automatically paid into? Tariffs are counterproductive when you have a hyper financialized economy. I’m not making the argument tariffs are beneficial whatsoever, but to say billions of dollars refunded don’t go anywhere into the overall economy is just not true.
Combined with the wealthiest getting most/all the tax breaks and it’s the actual formula for the problem of the debt that has suddenly gone silent about two years ago
What people don’t really understand is that a lot of the tariffs are going to get indirectly refunded in the same way they were indirectly collected: through wages, employment, and shareholder returns as the economy rebounds
For whatever reason, a lot of people think that price pass-through is the only (or even dominant) mechanism, but this isn’t really what economics tells us, especially not in the short run
Was just about to write this. The people arguing that this is a good thing are literally just advocating for trickle down economics, which is absolute garbage.
The top comment you made almost verbatim says that the checks given to big fucking corporations would trickle down to us through wages and everyone here is telling you that is horseshit, me included lol
You know, whenever politicians and economists loftly talk about those topics, I'd really like to see the spreadsheets with all numbers in and out.
I have a hunch that most ends in the pockets of a few.
It is still unbelievable that USAnians didn't revolt when Reagan talked about "trickle down".
Not flowing, not pouring, but only trickling, like scraps falling off a table. Did they not think for a moment?
And then they voted for that monster. Un.Be.Frickin.Lievable.
So this term was already coined in 1932 - and then adequately(!) used again to characterize what Reagan's plans were actually going to look like.
Here's what some search engine spat out:
Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, famously gave a candid interview to The Atlantic in 1981 acknowledging that the tax cuts were difficult to sell directly as a top-heavy benefit.
Stockman was quoted saying, "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."
This statement was made in a private context and leaked/published by a journalist; it was never an official term used by Reagan or any member of his administration in public addresses or policy documents.
Yes, people have no idea that some companies absorbed tariffs, others passed on the costs. How they absorbed them, whether priced were rising independent of tariffs, etc. are completely ignored in most cases. I do think it would be interesting to run a study of beliefs about the % of price increase attributable to the tariffs vs other factors.
Note that there is a very compelling case against indirect refunding where pass-through was transparent: those consumers who paid higher prices due to the tariffs may not benefit from either direct or indirect refunding of that revenue. The incidence and intensity of costs of tariffs for a given actor need not correlate with the incidence and intensity of benefits of the refunds through whatever means it happens.
I love that you seem to try to make the case that having those that paid for this shit getting their money back is somehow BETTER for the person that paid for this shit.
Beautiful levels of right wing bullshit. Just stellar. What does it take for a person to get like this? How broken can one be to put this much effort into harming society?
I love that you seem to try to make the case that having those that paid for this shit getting their money back is somehow BETTER for the person that paid for this shit.
Beautiful levels of right wing bullshit. Just stellar. What does it take for a person to get like this? How broken can one be to put this much effort into harming society?
SparksAndSpyro | 9 hours ago
In all honesty, anyone with two braincells knew this was exactly what was going to happen. I called it as soon as Trump won the election. The unilateral tariffs were illegal and they were going to always get paid back to the companies who directly paid them, regardless of whether they passed the cost on to consumers or not.
Yet voters still chose to reelect Trump. Hard to feel any sympathy. Nothing to blame but their own ignorance.
PsychologicalBee1801 | 7 hours ago
Tarrifs were a way to increase taxes on poor people - blame someone else and make money for Trump and his Allies through 3 ways - bribes from the other country - “hey leader of Europe nice economy you have here - it’d be a shame if I were to break it. If you secretly buy my crypto I’ll lower it
And a way to have his Allies buy up tariff dollars when they are overturned
Lastly if helps the stock market because the companies aren’t giving that money back. And he’s bought more stocks than any other president.
Everything Trump does is for himself. If his allies get something. - it’s so they pay him in some other way.
jdub67a | 5 hours ago
Don't forget that he used raising and lowering tariffs to manipulate the stock market so he could enrich himself and his friends via insider trading.
1plus1equalsfun | 4 hours ago
I know a Texan, and last week he was singing the blues for the liquor industry, how people are being laid off, farmers can't get cheap feed (I guess it's a by-product of the booze industry; I don't know), etc, etc, etc. Boo hoo hoo.
When I said that I can't begin to feel sorry for them, since all of the owners and pretty much all of the employees voted for Trump, he was aghast; where was my compassion? Hey, they wanted it; they got it. "Yeah, but people didn't understand what tariffs would cause!"
The world punishes people for their ignorance all the time. I feel bad for people who did their part and voted against this, but the rest can eat shit. I'm sitting here in British Columbia, watching mill after mill close due to this...
I'm supposed to feel bad for people who voted for their jobs to disappear?
kent_eh | 3 hours ago
> "Yeah, but people didn't understand what tariffs would cause!"
Educated people did.
Of course, we know that Trump "loves the poorly educated"...
GuelphEastEndGhetto | 7 hours ago
No worries. At some point the new tariffs will be rescinded and another round of bonus cheques sent to businesses. Some politicians may even buy the refunds for pennies on the dollar prior before hand. So much winning, but it’s the people losing.
1900grs | 6 hours ago
The only move was to make large purchases, if you were able to, before tariffs and "inflation", hit prices. A person can't outrun those kind of corporate hikes and the long term instability caused by this admin, but maybe a person could save a couple bucks by getting a new laptop or car or what have you before the nonsense took hold.
VeteranSergeant | 6 hours ago
I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if we find out down the road that this was the intent all along. Almost everything else Trump has done has been to enrich either himself or his billionaire buddies.
This put billions of dollars of profit directly into some of the biggest companies in America, with the dividends being paid to the shareholders.
Trowaway9285 | 4 hours ago
Psstt… this was the intent all along. We don’t have to wait until down the road
Suitable-Option833 | 3 hours ago
Of course that was the intent. Project 2025 detailed it all out. This is all by design, literally.
kindofnotlistening | 18 minutes ago
No one feels crazy than being in the group of people who actually looked into Project 2025. I am still laying out what will happen to people and they’re still telling me it couldn’t happened.
It already happened.
TheOnlyBrainCellLeft | 5 hours ago
Why didn't anyone tell me?
SparksAndSpyro | 5 hours ago
Lots of people tried. Every credible economist tried, even the hyper conservative ones 🤷
TheOnlyBrainCellLeft | 5 hours ago
If only I'd had that other brain cell.
VacanyeraYT | 11 hours ago
Socialize the costs, privatize the gains.
When tariffs were imposed, corporations passed 100% of the price hikes directly to everyday consumers. Now that refunds are being paid out, those billions stay right in corporate accounts and stock buybacks while consumers get zero relief
jersey_viking | 9 hours ago
Trumps design to keep corporate happy while he steals from the American people. He gets off on little kids and stealing whatever he can from tax payers to enrich himself or pay off his cronies.
JonnyAU | 6 hours ago
I think that gives Trump too much credit. He doesn't have the intelligence to plan a scheme that long. It's more so that he just did something impulsive and it worked out in corporations' favor because that's just how our system is set up. Or at the very least, the scheme was cooked up by someone smarter close to Trump, presented to him, and he just said OK.
Swoly_Deadlift | 5 hours ago
It was cooked up as a scheme to make corporations kiss the ring for tariff exemptions all while allowing him to do some insider trading. The tariff refunds going back to corporations was likely a convenient exit plan that was thought through but not the primary intention.
Rest assured he did plan far enough ahead to make sure there was a 0% chance of consumers benefitting at the expense of corporations.
NobodyLikedThat1 | 5 hours ago
one of those things where no matter how it panned out, the corporations could profit from it. Tariff? Pass the price onto consumers. Still making profit. Tariff refund? Pure unadulterated profit. Shrinking product size and raising prices? Believe it or not, still more profit.
basil_not_the_plant | 3 hours ago
I have seen videos of him signing EOs and asking one of the sycophants behind him "What is this about?".
Runfasterbitch | 6 hours ago
Don’t forget that Howard Lutnick’s son (who took over leadership of daddy’s firm) bought the rights to those refunds from many corporations for Pennie’s on the dollar last year
dosha906 | 5 hours ago
Apparently individuals can't buy tariff refunds either. I checked cuz I wanted to buy one lol
KarmaticArmageddon | 6 hours ago
And even with the tariffs being declared illegal, none of those prices are ever going back down, so Trump essentially handed corporations a "legitimate" reason to permanently price gouge.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 10 hours ago
>passed 100% of the price hikes directly to everyday consumers
No
>stay right in corporate accounts and stock buybacks
Also no
>while consumers get zero relief
Even if you think it goes to stock buybacks, that would be relief for consumers
Unique_Yak4659 | 10 hours ago
How would stock buybacks be relief for consumers?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 10 hours ago
The cash that got refunded from tariffs is getting distributed from the company to individuals
cbbbluedevil | 8 hours ago
You are either extremely naive or have a prebuilt assumption that everyday customers of these companies own their stock already and then would benefit from the stock price going up.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
I didn’t say anything about the stock price
DonaldRapist | 7 hours ago
Because you’re playing a stupid word game and not seriously conversing. Go somewhere else.
Opposite-Program8490 | 10 hours ago
There really is no end to the brainless apologism on the right.
Never thought I'd see a real person pull out the "corproartions are people" argument to excuse blatant fleecing of the general public.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
>corporations are people
Where did I say this, or anything remotely resembling this? My comment was a single sentence long, and you still couldn’t be bothered to read it?
Opposite-Program8490 | 9 hours ago
When you say stock buybacks are helping individuals, do you even consider that those aren't the same individuals who were harmed by these tariffs?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
Why would you think that?
imbakinacake | 8 hours ago
Because it obviously isn't...?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
How do you know which shareholders are selling their stock at any given point in time?
Namaste421 | 9 hours ago
We read it and are all flabbergasted. The point is bizarre and incoherent.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
It’s bizarre to say that a stock buyback returns cash to shareholders?
Namaste421 | 9 hours ago
You are still not participating in the correct conversation.
bobandgeorge | 8 hours ago
We went from "consumers" to "individuals" to "shareholders".
This is pathetic.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
Those are all the same group
Bapplebees | 9 hours ago
Shareholders =/= consumers
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
Why not?
Captobvious75 | 9 hours ago
A buyback is not a dividend cheque lol
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
Show me where I said it’s a dividend check. Are you sure you know what a stock buyback is?
Captobvious75 | 9 hours ago
How is a buyback putting money back in the pockets of investors?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
Do you know what a buyback is? A company sends cash to investors in exchange for their stock
toochillpill | 8 hours ago
You don't know what a buyback is.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
>A company sends cash to investors in exchange for their stock
Maybe read this again
Unique_Yak4659 | 10 hours ago
First I’ve heard that….so I’ve bought a lot of different things from a lot of different businesses over the last year….how am I getting those checks?
Dub-MS | 10 hours ago
Increased stock value
Unique_Yak4659 | 9 hours ago
lol …you’re joking right? Or at least I hope that’s sarcasm
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
You don’t get money from a stock buyback unless you’re selling stock. That doesn’t change the fact that stock buybacks benefit consumers though
mrbigglesworth95 | 9 hours ago
In what way?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
Because selling shareholders, who are also consumers in the economy, get money that was originally paid as tariffs
mrbigglesworth95 | 8 hours ago
I would argue that this argument is an attempt at a semantical bait and switch.
When you say stock buybacks benefit consumers, the assumed meaning of consumers is, 'consumers at large.'
However, what you mean is that, it actually just benefits an extremely narrow subset of people, and since all people are technically consumers, therefore it benefits people who are consumers -- consumers.
No one is arguing against that.
People are saying that consumers at large -- people who might have paid inflated prices for goods offered by the company -- will not benefit from tariff refunds or stock buybacks.
KarmaticArmageddon | 6 hours ago
He's obviously arguing in bad faith. That or he's just outlandishly dumb.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
That’s exactly why my original point is that consumer prices isn’t the main mechanism of cost pass-through from tariffs in the short term
tribbans95 | 9 hours ago
It only benefits stock holders
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
Stock holders are consumers…
tribbans95 | 9 hours ago
Yeah but stock holders is a better term to use because it doesn’t help consumers as a whole, like the price of eggs going down for example. It only benefits stock holders. A lot of consumers don’t have the capital to benefit from stock buybacks
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 8 hours ago
That’s why you need to go back to my original comment where I said that the main pass-through mechanism in the short term isn’t in consumer prices
bobandgeorge | 8 hours ago
Right, so we're back to the original comment that says "Socialize the costs, privatize the gains."
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
Not necessarily and, in reality, not often.
You don’t need to fuck around with murky language and fake words when we have these things called definitions of words.
Consumers refers to the people who paid the tariffs by co aiming the good or product.
Not paid into the company. I can’t believe I’m wasting my time on this but you can imagine most investors in a broad fund will never buy a single good or service from the companies invested.
Accomplished_Yak9939 | 8 hours ago
All stock holders are consumers. Not all consumers are stock holders.
Including all accounts and retirement the median American has about $52,000 tied to the market. Direct stock investments is $15k, the bottom 50% of all investors is $12k. Only around 60% of all Americans own stock. This skews so that the more wealthy you are the more likely you are to be invested.
So yeah, doing some quick math & checking some studies, cost of living for an American household is up $1,000 to $1,7000 ytd from tariffs alone. STRICTLY tariffs.
Actual YTD market growth is roughly 7.7% after we remove inflation from the nominal return. 15.5% for the trailing one year real.
So let’s break it down an above average (financially) American family that still fits into the bottom 50% of all investors.
$12k invested (more than most Americans). At 22.3% aggregate stock growth. After we factor in federal taxes, cost of living increases & tariff impacts, the impact on the median American family is….
$304.94 per parent or $609.88 for the entire household.
So your median household within the subset that can actually participate saw growth of barely over $600.
People below that (40% of all Americans & those worse off in general) actually saw their purchasing power decrease.
Math is fun.
Captobvious75 | 9 hours ago
And thats assuming some other issue did not bring the stock price down.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 9 hours ago
This has nothing to do with the stock price
Captobvious75 | 9 hours ago
LOL sure man
ElectricalAmoeba1991 | 10 hours ago
Obvious community member
KarmaticArmageddon | 6 hours ago
>The cash that got refunded from tariffs is getting distributed from the company to a few individuals in the C-suite
FTFY
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 6 hours ago
A company can’t choose who they buy stock from lmao
1900grs | 5 hours ago
> getting distributed from the company to individuals
I'm curious what mechanism you're thinking of for distribution and which individuals. I'm asking in good faith because I just don't see what you're seeing.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 5 hours ago
When a company buys back their stock, they’re sending out cash to investors who happen to be selling at that same point in time
Accomplished_Yak9939 | 8 hours ago
I’ll correct a few things, because based on these comments it sounds like you may be deeply confused and misled by your understanding of corporate law, shareholder primacy, stock buyback function & measured statistically significant results. I won’t bore you with figures, but here it is eli5 as best I can, because all of your statements assume fiduciary duty does not exist & rose colored wishful thinking is blatantly separate from fact.
“large corporations passed the vast majority of costs onto consumers. Very few absorbed costs. This behavior of absorbing costs does not happen in the overwhelming majority of public companies because companies have responsibility to shareholders before employees, customers or society at large. This has been precedent across America since Dodge Brothers V Ford.”
“Since the 1990’s, the amount of stock buybacks has increased drastically. In 1998 total stock repurchases surpassed cash dividends paid out. This trend has continued. Why is this done? It increases earning per share which many executives pay is based on, enhances stock market performance & allows those invested to avoid immediate taxation on their gains by repurchasing instead of receiving dividends. All of these actions, behaviors & regulations set an environment where corporations & the extremely wealthy retain the vast majority of benefit.”
As such, stock buybacks in absolutely no way, shape or form primarily benefits or provides relief for consumers.
Again: eli5. More than happy to break out the graphs, charts & statistics lectures until your eyes glaze over. Let’s n, please.
shotputlover | 9 hours ago
lol if only you sayin something made it true.
martin | 8 hours ago
Right next to my DOGE check.
dust4ngel | 3 hours ago
DOGE fired the guy who writes the DOGE checks, so you're actually saving even more money.
daerath | 9 hours ago
This is where class action lawsuits have to come into the picture. The lawyers will then claim massive chunks of the awards, but that's better than the corporations keeping it.
XSmooth84 | 8 hours ago
Getting a $17 check 3 years from now is gonna be sweeeeeeettttt
popsicle_of_meat | 6 hours ago
But the only way to set SOME sort of accountability is to do it. The business may not care about your $17, but they WILL care about cutting hundreds of thousands of $17 checks, legal fees, etc. You may not get YOUR fair share, but if the businesses get hurt bad enough, they shouldn't repeat the actions if the penalty is high enough to be a deterrent.
Runfasterbitch | 6 hours ago
Except for the fact that whether the businesses choose to repeat their “actions” or not is irrelevant. This was a state sponsored grift through which Donald Trump took money out of the pockets of millions of Americans and handed it directly to large corporations to enrich his wealthy loyalists
popsicle_of_meat | 6 hours ago
The businesses could have pushed back against it. You make it sound like they were innocent bystanders who just had money thrown at them. They still needed to be involved somehow. Were they the entire force behind it? Of course not. But if you're going to try and correct something, you need to go after ALL involved parties.
Runfasterbitch | 6 hours ago
We should go after our government, because it was their idea, they engineered it, and facilitated it
popsicle_of_meat | 6 hours ago
True.
kent_eh | 3 hours ago
> The businesses could have pushed back against it.
They also could have not funded Trump's (and his senate/congress accomplices) re-election.
kent_eh | 3 hours ago
> if the penalty is high enough to be a deterrent.
At least until a few years go by and those lessons are forgotten.
andtheniansaid | 8 hours ago
The tariff refunds will need to go back to who paid the tariffs, in these cases it's these companies. People should be able to get back the tariff where they paid it directly, but if they paid it indirectly through increased prices when purchasing something in the US, I don't see any lawsuit working.
ishboo3002 | 7 hours ago
Yeah this would get thrown out of court immediately
OkConsideration123 | 6 hours ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/07/21/nintendo-wont-pass-on-tariff-refunds-arguing-consumers-received-exactly-what-they-bargained-and-paid-for/
“Nintendo or one of its retailers set a price for each product, and consumers decided whether that price was worth paying,” Nintendo’s attorneys wrote. “Those who bought Nintendo’s products received exactly what they bargained and paid for: a console, game and/or accessory at a price to which both parties agreed.”
Not saying it’s right, but I’m not sure how effective class actions would be given the ones already filed and the arguments against them.
daerath | 5 hours ago
The basis would be, "Yes, you raised the prices because you had to pay tariffs. Then we paid the raised price, effectively negating the tariff. Now you are getting a tariff rebate designed to repay you for the costs of the tariff we already repaid for you by buying a product with that tariff factored in to the price."
Would that be successful? Dunno. If the rebates are for unsold product or for products sold without passing the tariff to the consumer, then they would be unsuccessful. If they are a blanket refund for everything, then the chances of lawsuits go up.
Bapplebees | 4 hours ago
A company can raise or lower prices however they want at any time. There’s nothing illegal about raising prices temporarily to cover temporarily increased costs like tariffs, regardless of the reasoning or if those costs were eventually recouped
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
That’s the only path they’ve given us and it’s actual garbage. It’s fucking sad that the only mechanism we have against them funneling our money to the top is another way to funnel yet another smaller chunk of our money through some pitiful middle men who do little and gain all the reward while we get actual pennies.
Bapplebees | 7 hours ago
There is nothing to litigate. The companies paid the tariffs, not the consumers. The cost, in most cases, was passed on the consumer but that was the choice of the company to raise prices, and the choice of the consumer to purchase the product at an increased price
JonnyAU | 6 hours ago
It was as much of a "choice" as when your girl asks you "do I look fat in this?"
grio | an hour ago
How is it better? On average less than 10% of class action suit payouts reach the victims. Money just get redistributed from rich on one side to rich on the other. Lawyers get rich, interested parties get rich, average people get gauged.
aurelorba | 7 hours ago
The ballroom, the reflecting pool, the Qatari 747, the "Weaponization" slush fund, the IRS settlement he gifted himself as plaintiff, defendant and arbiter - these things cost money.
dust4ngel | 3 hours ago
> these things cost money
your money™
johnb300m | 6 hours ago
The ~35million my company got in tariff refunds was immediately put into stock buybacks.
Considering I own maybe a dozen shares of my company thru the ESOP, I got a couple pennies in unrealized gains…..
alzheimerscat | 4 hours ago
Moneybags here...
KeyResearcher2620 | 3 hours ago
What company and how did they do this so fast? The refunds just went out.
Aspectdude09 | 7 hours ago
The USA feels like a corporate communist country. All the money goes to corporations and rich families.
I have not gotten one single thing from this government, but I’m still taxed the same.
It is some type of rich people’s communism or something
dust4ngel | 3 hours ago
> The USA feels like a corporate communist country. All the money goes to corporations
communism - n: an economic system that prioritizes the interests of capital over labor. see also: capitalism.
Turd_Furguson0228 | 6 hours ago
I think companies are getting the refunds because they filed a suit over the tariffs being illegal. Not saying it’s fair but I think that is how it worked out.
NeighborhoodBest2944 | 6 hours ago
Quite a trick, right? Tariff the consumer (direct taxi), then reward corporations to boost eps and revenue and goose the market (windfall, not tax)
wormtheology | 11 hours ago
Being unironic? Employment rates and asset prices going up. It’s a shit reason, but since most middle-aged citizens in the US have a retirement investment vehicle, pension, or money in social security, it’s supposed to buttress the digital numbers in asset portfolios that drive those investment vehicles.
portmanteaudition | 11 hours ago
Social Security is exclusively invested in non-marketable special issue securities issued by the Treasury. Tariff refunds go to non-governmental entities only, thus not benefitting the relevant trust funds for social security.
wormtheology | 10 hours ago
Huh, I stand corrected. I always thought there was a threshold where if you’re older, collect SS, and sell stock, your gross income changes and thus you have to pay a tax on the social security entitlements you collect.
Xyrus2000 | 10 hours ago
Employment rates can't be trusted because of the way they're tabulated. Assets belong to Wall Street, not Main Street (median 401 (k) balance is $38K). Social Security does not invest in market assets. Pensions basically don't exist anymore.
And prices have not come down.
We the people don't get our cut. That's not how the system is designed to work. It is designed to extract money from those with less and give it to those with more. Those with more own approximately 97% of the wealth and also receive about 97 cents of every new dollar of wealth that is created.
The system works for them, not us.
wormtheology | 10 hours ago
Just because the median of a 401k is 38k per whatever metric you’re measuring doesn’t mean the value is not going to be elevated after reports of companies getting tariff money back. Pensions are thinning across the board, yeah, but to say they aren’t important or flat out don’t exist currently is disingenuous.
You’ll get no argument from me when it comes to the metrics though. Employment rates are wholly distorted with how they are calculated. While Wall Street is gaining the lion’s share of the gains, a lot of people on Main Street are invested into numerous index funds which are at all time highs. Again, it’s a shit reason, like I mentioned before in my previous post, but companies gaining billions of dollars do benefit a number of people who are middle class.
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
If this causes a x% gain its gain is far less than the average consumer paid in tariffs.
That’s just simple math.
Now, if you are very wealthy and have millions invested, a 2% gain is pretty decent and probably less than you spent in tariffs and price increases.
Basic stuff
lock_robster2022 | 10 hours ago
Nice that you slipped social security in there, otherwise that’s not true for most Americans
wormtheology | 9 hours ago
Nah it was dead wrong. I had a misstep on how Social Security was funded and taxed for a minute. Another commenter clarifed it.
“Not true for most middle-aged Americans.” Are we making the argument that many middle-aged Americans don’t have a benefits plan they pay into for retirement? 401ks, ROTH IRAs, pensions, and other investment vehicles like that are automatically paid into? Tariffs are counterproductive when you have a hyper financialized economy. I’m not making the argument tariffs are beneficial whatsoever, but to say billions of dollars refunded don’t go anywhere into the overall economy is just not true.
pharmphresh | 9 hours ago
Yes there's a lot of people in the US that have 0 retirement investment outside of social security.
XenopusRex | 9 hours ago
The tariff refunds are injected into the economy in a manner that redistributes wealth upwards. This is the last thing that America needs in 2026.
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
Combined with the wealthiest getting most/all the tax breaks and it’s the actual formula for the problem of the debt that has suddenly gone silent about two years ago
OscarOzzieOzborne21 | 8 hours ago
This might happen. Or the companies can just pocket the money.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 11 hours ago
What people don’t really understand is that a lot of the tariffs are going to get indirectly refunded in the same way they were indirectly collected: through wages, employment, and shareholder returns as the economy rebounds
For whatever reason, a lot of people think that price pass-through is the only (or even dominant) mechanism, but this isn’t really what economics tells us, especially not in the short run
WeAreElectricity | 11 hours ago
It will like… trickle… down!
MuffinMan220 | 10 hours ago
Was just about to write this. The people arguing that this is a good thing are literally just advocating for trickle down economics, which is absolute garbage.
Darkstool | 7 hours ago
No some will trickle sideways to lutnicks hedge
Darkstool | 7 hours ago
No some will trickle sideways to lutnicks hedge
Darkstool | 7 hours ago
No some will trickle sideways to lutnicks hedge
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 11 hours ago
I don’t think you’ll find any economist arguing that removing tariffs doesn’t help the economy
Leading-Debate-9278 | 10 hours ago
That’s not the point…
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 10 hours ago
That was my entire point. I’m the person who made the top comment
Lemp_Triscuit11 | 8 hours ago
The top comment you made almost verbatim says that the checks given to big fucking corporations would trickle down to us through wages and everyone here is telling you that is horseshit, me included lol
JonnyAU | 6 hours ago
Judging from his comments, that's this dude's M.O. He makes an ignorant statement and when he gets called out, he just changes what he said entirely.
Lemp_Triscuit11 | 6 hours ago
Weird fucking hobby
Fit_Significance8598 | 11 hours ago
You know, whenever politicians and economists loftly talk about those topics, I'd really like to see the spreadsheets with all numbers in and out.
I have a hunch that most ends in the pockets of a few.
It is still unbelievable that USAnians didn't revolt when Reagan talked about "trickle down". Not flowing, not pouring, but only trickling, like scraps falling off a table. Did they not think for a moment? And then they voted for that monster. Un.Be.Frickin.Lievable.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 10 hours ago
Reagan never talked about trickle down. The term was coined by a comedian
Part of the economic policy of the 80s involved fiscal policy targeted at aggregate supply, due to the stagflation of the period
Fit_Significance8598 | 10 hours ago
Thanks, I learned something new!
So this term was already coined in 1932 - and then adequately(!) used again to characterize what Reagan's plans were actually going to look like.
Here's what some search engine spat out:
Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, famously gave a candid interview to The Atlantic in 1981 acknowledging that the tax cuts were difficult to sell directly as a top-heavy benefit. Stockman was quoted saying, "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." This statement was made in a private context and leaked/published by a journalist; it was never an official term used by Reagan or any member of his administration in public addresses or policy documents.
And they still voted for that.
portmanteaudition | 11 hours ago
Yes, people have no idea that some companies absorbed tariffs, others passed on the costs. How they absorbed them, whether priced were rising independent of tariffs, etc. are completely ignored in most cases. I do think it would be interesting to run a study of beliefs about the % of price increase attributable to the tariffs vs other factors.
Note that there is a very compelling case against indirect refunding where pass-through was transparent: those consumers who paid higher prices due to the tariffs may not benefit from either direct or indirect refunding of that revenue. The incidence and intensity of costs of tariffs for a given actor need not correlate with the incidence and intensity of benefits of the refunds through whatever means it happens.
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
I love that you seem to try to make the case that having those that paid for this shit getting their money back is somehow BETTER for the person that paid for this shit.
Beautiful levels of right wing bullshit. Just stellar. What does it take for a person to get like this? How broken can one be to put this much effort into harming society?
emp-sup-bry | 8 hours ago
I love that you seem to try to make the case that having those that paid for this shit getting their money back is somehow BETTER for the person that paid for this shit.
Beautiful levels of right wing bullshit. Just stellar. What does it take for a person to get like this? How broken can one be to put this much effort into harming society?
portmanteaudition | 5 hours ago
What