They should be suing Trump. It was a scam by him to funnel money to him and his billionaire friends’ pockets.
What?! A soulless megacorporation pocketed refunds for tariffs that they never actually paid (because they forced the end user to eat the cost)??
I seriously hope this lawsuit works, because it’d set one hell of a precedent for future lawsuits.
SCOTUS: Companies cannot be sued because they’re better than people
“All humans are equal, but some humans are more equal than others.”
I have some bad news.
I know it would be logistically difficult to give every customer a fair refund for tariffs, so I’d be willing to spilt the diff and say every non-managerial employee should get the tariffs paid back as a tax-free bonus.
Like most of these cases it’ll have to be done as a class action lawsuit at this scale. That means the consumer is going to get a check for a dollar and the lawyers are going to get rich. The consumer never wins.
This doesn’t make sense to me at all. First of all the only party paying an actual tariff is the party that imports the goods. Is that Amazon? For a lot of things, I’m sure it is. For other things, Amazon is just paying a higher price for the goods due to tariffs, but they are not the one paying the tariffs and thus could not be the one to refund them. I work with a lot of different companies to source materials and none of them are refunding any tariffs. What makes Amazon different? Also, last I heard the tariffs were deemed illegal, but that ruling is under appeal so nothing has really changed at this point. Also keep in mind that only the latest round of tariffs is in question. There were tariffs that went into effect in Trump’s first term and were upheld during the Biden era. Those aren’t going anywhere. I’m not a big fan of Amazon, but I don’t see where this lawsuit has any teeth since every other company out there is handling things the same way.
For other things, Amazon is just paying a higher price for the goods due to tariffs, but they are not the one paying the tariffs and thus could not be the one to refund them.
The supreme court disagrees with you. Otherwise businesses wouldn’t have the option to seek a tariff refund: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-file-for-tariff-refund/
If a company adds a tariff charge to its bill when a consumer pays, or it can be shown that they passed along a charge by raising the price by the tariff amount or similar, then it is clear the consumer paid. The party paying the tariff is the consumer. Suing for a refund sets precedent, and how the current round of tariffs were deemed illegal in the first place.
Yeah, “everyone else is doing it, so why are you only suing this megacorp??” Because I can’t sue every company at the same time? OP’s comment reads like such a “if you didn’t bring enough lawsuit for everyone, you can’t have any at all” argument.
My suppliers show a tariff surcharge on my invoices. I charge a tariff surcharge on my products so the consumer knows where that cost comes from and also knows that I can remove that charge from the quote if the tariffs get pulled back before they sign a contract. Note that a surcharge is not a tariff. It just indicated the cause for the increased price. Sure the consumer paid the cost in the end, but so did the retailer, the distributor and the importer. Unless a refund trickles down from the importer, who is the only party that actually paid a tariff, which is never going to happen, then no one is getting their money back once it’s been spent. You can sue all you want and pretend it’s setting a precedent, but you are really just wasting time and resources because you don’t understand the supply change and who is actually liable. Hell, even the importer has to sue the government to get that tariff money back before they would even remotely be liable to pass it down the chain. More than likely they’ll just pocket the money if the government voluntarily gives it back (unlikely) because passing it down the chain would be a logistical nightmare. I guess the real answer here is that every company that tried to be transparent about the tariff costs should have just lumped it into the cost of goods so it was invisible to the consumer. You can’t sue for something you can’t prove is there. Punish the honest parties while the people that profited get to keep the money anyway.
The money the companies would be getting back would be opportunity cost, not any actual money. The companies didn’t pay tariffs, the only people that do are end consumers. So if it was just about actually dollar amounts, they are just getting even more of the consumers money in the end.
What could be argued is the opportunity cost. People may have been less likely to buy the product due to increased costs. Fewer sales, less profit, etc, etc. But there is no way to get an actual number since we can’t know exactly how much they would have had.
Despite that also being a logistical nightmare, guess who is putting in a shit ton of time and resources into ensuring the rich get their money? It would be pretty easy to just do a tax credit for consumers, and likely a lot more accurate. The companies would get the money back in the end anyway, so what’s it matter.
I agree that the best way to do this would be a tax rebate. It’s a convoluted chain of credits to pass the refund back down the line the same way it was charged with no guarantee it will ever make it to the consumer in any meaningful way. Let the government be liable instead of forcing every company in the chain to take on liability. The consumer and small business will always be the loser in the chain while the lawyers get richer.
Currently, due to recent litigation, importers and companies are able to request tariff refunds. So if you paid a tariff directly, then you can request a refund and the government is required to pay you back. This is already decided and there is a refund request website.
Current lawsuits like this one are saying that Amazon requested the refund because they have the tariff receipt, and they’ll get the refund. Folks are suing Amazon because while they have the receipt, they passed on the charge, meaning they didn’t really pay the tariff in actuality. So they’re arguing that if the tariffs are illegal (already decided), and that tariff refunds are being sent out (already decided), then companies should also be required to refund their customers for the increased costs they passed along (lawsuits like this one).
It’s common sense. If a company charged 10 dollars for a product before the tariffs, charged 15 after the tariffs because it cost them 5 dollars in tariffs, then they still made the same profit after the consumer bought the product, and the consumer paid the tariff. So when a refund goes out, companies should have to return that tariff charge to the consumer. They’ll literally make the same profit and the consumer will be reimbursed then for the tariff charge they paid. This is the precedent we want to set, because otherwise consumers get screwed both ways while large companies get to pocket tariff costs. This is class warfare; working class and small business owners are losing.
But mah anti Trump rant? But really, thank you. People here act as if “Amazon didn’t pay the tariffs anyway, because they got the money back from the customer”. That is like saying the customer didn’t pay, it was the company they work for.
That is like saying the customer didn’t pay, it was the company they work for.
Not quite. We are actually working for the money being provided, it’s a transaction.
If there is a $20 item a person wants to buy, and there is a $5 tariff on the item, the company then increases the price to $25. The executive order was made illegal, queue the refunds, now the company gets $5 back. They now got $30 for an item that was $20. Obviously skipping all the actual taxes and costs, but you get the idea.
The only actual cost they could argue is the opportunity cost. Someone might not have bought the item because it was $25, but would have bought it if it was $20. But that amount is impossible to know.
