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The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (10 children)

The issue being that when these companies imported their goods they passed on the cost of tariffs to the consumer. And then they were reimbursed for the tariff by the government. So essentially this is the consumer giving those companies more money, but with extra steps to try to trick consumers into believing they didn’t.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Most don't even directly pass the cost to the consumer, they pass them down the line to retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, etc.

    Then those companies add the additional cost to the product as the sell them .... So only the importer is getting the refund, and only a handful of very large resellers are actually importers. Most small businesses buy from importers or wholesalers, and they won't get anything back either.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    But those small businesses have the option to pass those losses onto the consumer, and with blanket effects like tariffs it happens across the board. I own a small construction business, this is what happens when inflation goes crazy for my pricing anyway and it has never made my business not competitive for pricing before.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

    Absolutely. ...

    I own a software company, but we sell computer hardware to about half of our clients as well. We passed the increase in hardware to our clients as our suppliers passed it down to us.

    But I'm not an importer, and my main supplier imports about 50% of what we buy from them. The rest they buy from manufacturers that import their own product, or importers (or possibly even wholesalers that buy from importers), and we buy some stuff at retail, since we just don't buy enough to justify wholesale.

    We absolutely struggle to be competitive, and more so now than before. We don't have VC money, or credit card processor backing that many of our competitors do, so can't give hardware away at below cost, or for free. At the end of the day, we decreased our markup to help keep prices down, knowing that we'll ultimately make it up on software licensing over the next few years.

    Even then, our customers are all businesses that paid the increased tariff at the end of the day, so how do they get their taxes back, since most people are suggesting returning taxes to individuals.

    The whole thing is a freaking mess, without any real good answer that will actually make everyone happy.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah your situation sounds a lot more frustrating than mine my friend. And you’re right, it’s more complicated than how I laid it out. But its the long form version of what the core concept I put forward was; the wealthiest of us utilizing the tariff situation to squeeze more money out of small business and working class interests.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    There's no doubt that some super wealthy companies paid the tariff, raised prices, sold directly to consumers, and get the tariff back as pure profit.

    But there's also a lot of layers and nuance that people are missing outside of those dozen or so companies.

    Most retailers (especially small ones) don't import anything, and a lot of those tariffs were on raw materials (like steel or aluminum), or small parts that get imported by the container or ship load, and then broken up and sold through a dozen layers of wholesalers / resellers to eventually get to a machine shop or a manufacturer, that then gets added to other material to become a component or product, and sold to wholesalers, etc and passed through the same layers again, and possibly even exported as a complete product.

    All of this is what makes the prospect of refunding all of the illegal tariffs directly to consumers a real mess.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    if you wanted a refund you could have purchased the goods from another country and impoted them, accepting the risk that there is no refund.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Well I don’t live in the US so I don’t have to do that stupid shit. Bit for american consumers, that wasn’t what was fucking promised. What was promised was a cheque from the government as a reward for enduring the tariff situation. Instead what they got was screwed.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    I don't think that the government ever promised a tariff rebate to residents directly.

    The rapist or Musk may have offhandedly suggested on social media that they would, but anyone that believes anything they say is a fool.

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