Betting against the Trump tariffs

The right of Trump to impose tariffs at will and without Congressional approval is headed to the SCOTUS. What’s the odds that the tariffs will be overturned? 

Turns out there’s a market in tariff refunds if the SCOTUS rules against Trump:

“In July the US government brought in $29.6 billion in tariff revenue compared to $8.7 billion in July 2024. So that’s more than $20 billion in probably illegal tariffs before many of them had even kicked in. The current market for these refund rights is already in the tens of billions and could hit the hundreds of billions by years end. According to Wired, Cantor said in July that it had “the capacity to buy the rights to hundreds of millions of dollars” of tariff refunds. So the amounts we’re talking about, both at risk and in potential windfalls, is very, very big.”

And Trump’s treasury secretary stands to gain from insider trading.

“Lutnick can’t be certain what’s in a judge’s mind any more than Trump can. But he’ll have lots of visibility into what the government’s lawyers think, how they rate their odds of success, what their arguments will be. On top of that, given the immense corruption of the current Supreme Court I would put say there’s at least a 50%-50% shot that Trump and thus Lutnick will gets signals from one or more of the justices about how the Court will rule. Any way you look at this it’s corrupt as hell. And on a more metaphoric level it typifies the heads I win tails you lose rules the billionaire class and their sub-billionaire toadies live by.”

Just another Trump Administration grift.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs

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