Trump Just Refunded $166 Billion to Corporations. You Got Nothing.
Ford gets $1.3 billion. GM gets $500 million. The consumers who actually paid the tariff-inflated prices get a receipt. David Shuster on the Robin Hood scam in reverse.
By David Shuster
In the United States under Trump, there are few spectacles as predictable and sad as the sight of Americans being robbed twice and told to applaud the billionaire class efficiency.
The latest pathetic gag involves the Trump administration’s grand tariff crusade. As you may recall, Dementia Don and his sycophants insisted that taxing imports was a clever way to make foreigners suffer. The foreigner, of course, suffered very little. American consumers, as usual, got punched in the kidneys.
That’s because when Trump imposed his tariffs, or “liberation day” as he called it, nearly every U.S. industrialist and import business claimed victimhood. “Costs are rising,” they insisted. “Supply chains are strained! Sacrifices are necessary for the national good.” So, most U.S. corporations raised prices. Automobile sticker costs climbed upwards, along with household appliances, food, and nearly every manufactured contraption or product that required foreign assembly or foreign inputs.
And who paid? The clueless consumer in the showroom. The shopper in the grocery store. The citizen who imagined already profitable billion dollar corporations would absorb taxes out of civic tenderness.
The companies themselves absorbed almost nothing except the proceeds.
Then came the judiciary, solemn as always and generally late to every fire. The U.S. Supreme Court, after permitting the tariff carnival to run long enough for nearly every corporation to raise prices for almost a year, finally struck down the tariffs.
Three conservative justices, in a rare moment acknowledging reality, joined liberal justices in declaring the U.S. was not facing an economic emergency as Trump had claimed.
The Supreme Court ruling, in turn, has now triggered an immense cascade of tariff refunds — not to the citizens who paid the inflated prices, but to the corporations that already collected them.
And here comes the punch line. The Trump administration, with its habit for converting larceny into policy, is preparing to refund roughly $166 billion in tariffs to the very corporations that already collected the money from the public. One might as well reimburse a bank robber for wear and tear on his ransom notes.
Ford, we are informed, expects a return of some $1.3 billion. General Motors anticipates another $500 million. And what noble purpose shall this torrent of cash serve? Will it be distributed among customers who paid tariff-bloated prices? Will the automakers reduce the price of vehicles being sold now? Will Ford and GM ease the financial burdens of citizens whose bank accounts were squeezed in the first place?
Of course not. The automakers, like other corporations receiving tariff refunds from the Trump administration, say they will deposit the tariff money in their own accounts to “boost earnings.”
Thus, we have the whole majestic farce. The public pays inflated prices while corporate titans lecture us about patriotism. Then, the Trump Treasury sends the corporations a handsome rebate for expenses they already passed along to the public. Finally, the same corporations announce improved quarterly earnings, and the conservative financial press hails the triumph as evidence of managerial brilliance.
The American consumer, meanwhile, stands blinking in the smoke like a peasant who has just watched all his or her possessions loaded into the back of a thief’s wagon with nothing left behind but a receipt.
The truth is that tariffs have always been a crafty device for transferring wealth upward while disguising the process in patriotic bunting. Tariffs are sold to the masses as punishment for foreigners. But the foreigner somehow never seems to pay. Instead, the bill arrives at the local dealership, the toy store, and the kitchen table. The citizen, through what is essentially a consumption tax, finances the entire enterprise and is then invited to celebrate the fleecing as an act of national economic vigor.
And the insults keep coming. Because now, the corporations are going to be paid again. Their CEO’s will be granted even more obscenely high reward packages. The corporate investors and speculators who trade pieces of paper (or digital transactions) representing company shares will also make more money. After all, higher corporate earnings mean more stock value.
It’s like Robin Hood upside down, in reverse, and on steroids.
But this time, it’s not the poor who benefit from Robin, Friar Tuck, and Little John. The benefactors are the wealthiest 1%, including corporate CEO’s, hedge fund managers, and corporate speculators.
Consider what the United States could have done with the $166 billion the Trump treasury department is now transferring back in tariff refunds to already successful corporations.
We could have funded WIC – the nutrition program foe infants and mothers, for 20 years.
Or, we could have provided housing, for 15 years, for every person who is currently homeless.
Or, we could have funded Head Start, the preschool program for disadvantaged kids, for 12 years.
Or, we could have funded SNAP or “food stamp” benefits for 8 years. (Trump’s One Big Beautiful bill cut the SNAP program.)
Or, we could have given every person in America a check of $474.
Instead, we get nothing. And corporate America gets it all.
It is Trump style capitalism with the Orange Man’s smile and his family’s usual ethics. Heads the billionaire class wins, tails the public loses twice. And somewhere in the distance, one can almost hear the applause from Wall Street as ordinary Americans stand in the checkout line financing yet another victory parade for people who already own the floats.
Well, he did say that he didn’t care about the financial situation of Americans! I guess he meant it. After all, the rich get richer on the backs of the poor!
It is so vicious it leaves one speechless. At least it is out in the open hopefully for all to see. I dont know how we can overcome all this. It feels like the death of our society and culture.