Donald Trump on Tuesday told CNBC that he will gratefully “remember” U.S. companies that do not seek refunds for the tariffs he unilaterally imposed, which the Supreme Court later ruled were illegal.
Trump’s comment on “Squawk Box” came a day after U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a portal for importers to seek more than $160 billion in potential refunds for the so-called IEEPA tariffs.
He was asked about a number of large companies, among them Apple and Amazon, that have not filed requests for refunds for the tariffs they paid, potentially because they are worried about “offending” Trump.
I think the reason why the more big firms are not using the site is because they have lawyers and such to get refunds, not to mention plenty of means to weather the tariffs so it doesn’t affect them.
But it’s free money and companies love them some free money
Yes it’s free money. And it’s free money they can get by sending an old white guy with a brief case of papers directly to the treasury rather than wasting time with an online website that is likely not going to work or will but be a rabbit hole of grinding beruracy
Big company guy here. I have no involvement in tariffs, but I suspect:
Big company = big bureaucracy. Theres probably an intern somewhere combing through hundreds of thousands of documents labeled “tax” and trying to guess what is a border tariff, while their leader feeds the same document into ChatGPT and says “ChatGPT says we’re owed 5 quintillion dollars, can you validate that?”
While there may not be a specific “Tariff file” I would assume that the large corporations know the 101. IE if it is imported their going to pay a tariff on that.
So it wouldn’t be hard to figure out, it’s just because of their size and wealth they can take the hits but more importantly collect the losses some other way, even have someone go directly to Washington if they need government money.
Only when big company is the importer of record.
There are probably many tariffs paid to 3rd parties just like me paying UPS for a package shipped overseas, which just like me, big company can’t claim. Unlike me, however, big company is probably gearing up to send the lawyers to UPS/FedEx instead of Washington, because that’s who is getting some of their tariff dollars.
You’d be amazed how hard it is to figure something like that out. Hundreds or even thousands of people inputting data means nothing is filed correctly. The total costs are tracked closely because banks, but the below the line tariff amount could be buried in a phone camera photo of a receipt on someone’s computer screen.
Best case scenario you can filter directly for payments made to the government, but even that is prone to failure if they use a separate payment processor (e.g., for things paid via credit card).
UPS/FedEx being big corporates themselves so if they are the ones paying the imports well once again, lawyers to Washington