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beloch | 9 days ago

This will be so in some cases, but there are extra steps in others.

e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge.

3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to reduce prices for their customers, but probably won't. They'll set prices according to what the market will support.

4) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to companies, like Cantor Fitzgerald, that bought the rights to tariff refunds.

5) Seller doesn't get any extra money back, so there's no money to refund to consumers.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Cantor Fitzgerald, while just one of the companies doing this, was formerly headed by Howard Lutnick and is currently owned and operated by his sons.

discuss

order

madaxe_again|9 days ago

How is this not reverse Byzantine tax farming?

lesuorac|9 days ago

Where you going with this?

Afaik, Byzantine (or reverse) and other private tax collection setups aren't illegal.

LeifCarrotson|9 days ago

Some additional context to your note: Howard Lutnick is Trump's Secretary of the Treasury. And also was Epstein's literal next-door neighbor.

tedd4u|9 days ago

Lutnick is Secretary of Commerce. This is a smaller role than Scott Bessent, who is the Secretary of the Treasury.

lostlogin|9 days ago

Amazing. Did he get the role because of his skillset, of because of his skill at keeping his mouth shut?

abakker|9 days ago

And bought a house from Epstein for $10

gcanyon|8 days ago

To the extent this is true, the entire thing could literally be a grift (I'm not saying Trump is smart enough to come up with this, just that people around him are, and he's grifty enough to go along with it):

   1. Trump enacts the tariff, despite knowing it will be struck down.
   2. The tariff extracts hundreds of billions from the economy.
   3. Finance firms buy the potential refund for pennies on the dollar, knowing that Trump has no plan to defend the tariff.
   4. The Supreme Court strikes down the tariff, as planned.
   5. The finance firms profit on the refunds.
   6. We are all poorer, Trump's cronies are richer.

idiotsecant|8 days ago

Trump has been obsessed with tariffs for decades. I fully believe he thought this was a great idea. Lutnick, on the other hand, quite obviously forsaw this eventuality (as did anyone who understands how power actually flows in the United States) and encouraged it while preparing to profit massively himself. It's an obvious play, good on him for getting away with it. It's clear at this point that this administration has utterly collapsed the idea of the rule of law, though. 15 years ago this would have been a scandal that would have led to firings and possibly impeachment