A cynical take is that it is design. The cost of the tariffs gets passed on to the people, but the refund goes to the corporations who have no legal responsibility to pass it back to the people. It's basically a $100B wealth transfer. It also primes people to accept higher costs. It's not like those prices went back down after the tariffs ended.
Comments
A cynical take is that it is design. The cost of the tariffs gets passed on to the people, but the refund goes to the corporations who have no legal responsibility to pass it back to the people. It's basically a $100B wealth transfer. It also primes people to accept higher costs. It's not like those prices went back down after the tariffs ended.
Wait, but you're not allowed to see intent in these kinds of things. That disrupts plausible deniability, the whole thing empires, eg AI are built on.