As The Guardian reported this week:

The Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from the tariffs it collected before the US Supreme Court ruled them illegal, according to reports.

They added:

The $100bn (£74bn) figure, which represents 60% of the total $165bn collected from Donald Trump's “liberation day” tariffs, was reported by customs officials to the US court of international trade (CIT) on Tuesday, according to the Financial Times.

The key point to note here is that these refunds do not reflect the full sum paid in tariffs imposed by Trump that were subsequently struck down by the US courts.  Trump's administration is, in that case, still gaining from its actions in imposing tariffs without the legal power to do so.

But there is another, seemingly unreported and uncommented upon dimension to this. That is that the sums refunded are not necessarily ending up in the pockets of consumers who might have borne some or all of the cost of these tariffs in the first place. They are simply being taken as profit for the companies receiving them.

No wonder corporate America loves Trump. He acts illegally. They suffer a cost. Some of them undoubtedly tried to pass those costs on. Now they profit from the refunds. It is a win all round, unless you are the person on the street in the USA who might have suffered the cost of his fiasco.

No wonder the left-wing Democrats are doing so well in the USA. Maybe people are really understanding that the modern American dream is for a few to fleece the many in that country, much as it is here, in the UK.

It's time for change.

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