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.

> 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.

I'm actually interested to see how this goes legally. I haven't seen an actual attorney who understands the subject chime in on it yet. But I could see a case being made that a line item like that could have a basis of being refunded if the company charging them itself received a refund. Certainly a long shot, but I'm guessing someone will bring a case at some point to see what happens.

Ironically companies that broke out tariffs charges as line items were lauded for "doing the right thing" and are the only companies who could possibly be remotely on the hook here - any other company simply adding it to general margins is quite obviously in the clear.

Or keep it as a rainy day fund against the next time one of their major markets goes insane with attempted extortion, possibly successfully next time? Their customers paid a price they were comfortable with —- if a company returns part of that to the customer, they disadvantage themselves compared to their competitors who do not do so in the next round of tariffs, since their competitors can use the rainy day fund to delay price rises, capturing customer spend (which is to say, competitor-voluntary-donation-to-customer spend).

Why would they do that when they could fund share buybacks, or pay it out to shareholders as dividends?

The ghost of Milton Friedman speaks!

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)

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.

The actual incidence of tariffs is mostly on consumers, so giving remedies to businesses doesn't actually make any sense.

I'm not surprised, but I think this is a miscarriage of justice.

You knew what the price was when you paid for it. You weren't misled. What's the injustice?

Yes, it's a windfall for the business, and it would be nice for them to pass it on, but unless they promised to do it, that wasn't the deal.

I don't know what world you live in where an arbitrary and illegal price increase on essentially everything is "just."

The injustice isn't that consumers were harmed (this is just the nature of public policy with both winners and losers), but that our legal system does not accept that tax incidence exists and is giving taxpayer funds to businesses for no reason.

"this is all just business as usual" is a specific kind of deflection which serves a master.