A Boring Dystopia

Actually it's worse! Because the current US secretary of Commerce, Howard Luttnick, and his sons went around to companies most impacted by the illegal tariffs, and said that they'd pay them a small amount of money now, for the rights to the full tariff refund later. Basically betting that the tariffs would be ruled illegal, and that there would be massive refunds issued. So they bought up the rights to millions of refunds, for pennies on the dollar, effectively leveraging their insider knowledge of the issue, in one of less blatant instances of corruption within this administration.

I PAID THE TARRIFS.

But I did not vote for import fees.

How do you stop this crap. That money could have paid for universal healthcare many times over.

Rob the poor to pay the rich USA mentality

They're all fine with redistribution of wealth, but only in one direction.

This is called wealth transfer, conservatives only like it when it goes from the bottom to the top.

so glad the empire is destroying itself tho

Ted Dansons Voice: Woah woah woah, we weren't promised to be Charlie Sheen-Grade winners.

People in USA: so are your import tariffs gone now? Have tariff related price increases gone back down? Or have businesses just decided to keep that free money too?

It's actually even worse than just taxpayers paying businesses: Since the US doesn't have the tax revenue to pay the businesses, it will need to take out more debt to pay them. So the taxpayers will not only pay the businesses, but they will also pay interest. (That is, if you believe that the US will be able to stabilize its debt before defaulting. At the rate we're going, with the looter class taking US government funds, the US will end up defaulting before taxpayers have a chance to pay down the debt. To be clear, a default would be far more painful than the austerity required to stabilize the debt.)

All of these corporate fines, where the citizens get screwed, but the government gets all the money, needs to be handled differently.

We need to start an "America First Fund" (irony intended) for these sorts of fines, which will be the seed money to fund our wish list of social programs, starting with Medicare 4 All. As we collect fines, settlements, confiscations, etc. from Sociopathic Oligarchs and their corporations, it should go into the America First Fund, to finance a better life for all American citizens.

Hell yeah... all that "tarrif money" from the first go-arounds is in trump's pocket. You don't think HE'S going to pay for his criminal act, do you?

Get the fuck out of here !!! You crazy person you.

It's been a big slow robbery the whole time.

I feel like a double loser because of these morons grifting for their corporate overlords.