CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Tariff Refunds: Honest Policy Would Be Smart Politics

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On February 20, the US Supreme Court ruled part of US president Donald Trump’s crazy-quilt tariff scheme illegal in its particulars. Specifically, SCOTUS noticed that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not provide the authorization Trump claims for imposing tariffs as he pleases, in the amounts he pleases, on products from whatever country he pleases, when doing so pleases him.

The court did not, however, order refunds of the stolen money to the American importers that money was stolen from (and who passed the costs of the theft on to American consumers in the form of higher prices). It remanded the case back to lower courts so far as relief and restitution are concerned.

Tariff victims had already begun preemptively suing for the restitution they’re owed even before the Supreme Court ruling, and since that ruling other companies, including........

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