Tariffs Raised Consumers' Prices, but the Refunds Go Only to Businesses

Many businesses added specific surcharges to final sales to offset the tariffs they paid. While they have no legal obligation to refund those surcharges they imposed, it would be straightforward to do so and it would be the right thing to do.

Depending on the relationship it’s totally normal to say hey we want to adjust what you builded us.

Not every business the business relationship works that way, but it’s not unusual.

As for a surprise goes, I don’t know about surprised, but certainly it’s worth noting that after a massive illegal tax …. voters get no justice.

It's not a matter of "surprised", rather it's outraged over the lack of accountability. The administration acted illegally, which caused harm to consumers. It's reasonable to expect consumers to be made whole from the results of those illegal actions - the same as if corpos were found to be illegally colluding to raise prices without Grump spearheading it.

(although honestly I wouldn't be surprised if such a push ended up with the profligate spendthrift in chief sending more paltry "stimulus" checks with his ugly-ass signature on it right before midterms)

Zero businesses passed on the additional costs onto the consumer? None?

> Prime example is Mercedes. The RRP for post-tariff Mercedes vehicles was identical to the pre-tariff RRP.

If your prime example is a luxury car with a ton of margin built in, you need a better example. Tariffed commodities absolutely had the costs passed on, and far more of those are sold than high margin luxury products where manufacturers had the option to compress margins vs passing on the cost.

Also, there are lots of products that go through multiple middle men, the tariffs were included and marked up at every stage. Very few things go from manufacturer to retailer with no middlemen.

I’d guess about 1/4 to 1/3rd of tariff costs were absorbed and the rest passed along to the eventual end consumer.

I suspect you work nowhere near the money at work, the closer you get to the money, the more you realize exactly what is built into a price.

  > Importantly, journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis, implied that 10% tariff = 10% RRP rise. They never corrected themselves, nor for the economists who falsely claimed the economy would collapse.

This is irrelevant to the discussion in the article, which is specifically about refunding a portion of whatever amount a company receives back from the government to customers.

It's also pretty vague without any examples of what specifically deserves corrections.

> Importantly, journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis, implied that 10% tariff = 10% RRP rise. They never corrected themselves, nor for the economists who falsely claimed the economy would collapse.

Lovely strawman.

> journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis

It’s just the NYT. Let’s not demean the rest of the media for the faults of the NYT.