nytimes.com - Trump tariffs appeals court ruling economy

cnn.com - Trump tariff refund

wired.com - Cantor fitzgerald trump tariff refunds

talkingpointsmemo.com - Lutnick family angling to make astronomical sums off court nixing tariffs

President Trump continues to insist that he must have the powers of applying tariffs to make the country prosperous again. When a court found his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify his sweeping tariffs was illegal, he said, “If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” although the U.S. was not a third-world country before Trump launched his tariff war in April. He has said he will take the case before the Supreme Court.

If he loses there, as Elisabeth Buchwald wrote for CNN, the U.S. might have to pay back more than $210 billion to the American businesses that have paid the tariffs. Wired reported in late July: Wall Street companies, including Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company run by the sons of billionaire commerce secretary Howard Lutnick since Lutnick joined the Trump administration, have been buying up the rights to collect tariff refunds if the tariffs are struck down.

Wired notes that while making a bet on an uncertain outcome is a huge part of modern finance, the idea that a commerce secretary’s company is making bets on something the commerce secretary has significant authority over is a perfect symbol of the Trump era.

Apparently, the administration knew that it was a possibility (probability?) that thee Supreme Court would nix the tariffs and is now playing the card that not only wwould retuning the money paid to the consumer be impossible, but it wouold be administratively problematic to send the money back to the importers (of course not a penny of tariff has been paid by any of the countries that Trump is claiming are being punished by them). Of course the Treasury will be slammed because the taxes which used to fill the gap have been cut (and the cuts recently extended) by Congress.

The defensee of thee government's tariffs seems to be based on the extortion-like phrase "do you really want to take our last big sourcee of funds away?".

Jeff