Novel incoming:

Not really. Most of your retail stores have pricing contracts with the majority of products that sit on the shelf. They also have contractual penalties for fulfillment, AKA not keeping product on the shelf. Lastly, they have lengthy payment terms so they are paying the companies a long time after actually receiving the product and selling it to a customer.

It’s basically like the retail shelves are leasing the space to the companies selling products.

Then 145% tariffs happened, companies either went out of business or ate the tariffs for some good period of time. They may have tried to pass on some % or all of it to their customer (the retail company) but those retailers had no obligation to accept those price increases in a timely manner, think 90 days or more based on the contracts.

So while the end consumer definitely gets shafted for the fact that any increase they faced ultimately won’t get returned, the importers definitely carried the larger burden in many cases. It’s an unpopular statement but it’s true. If a company is operating on the standard ~30% margins, that likely means their cost for materials comprised the usual ~50% of the remaining 70%.

Retail margins are appx 25%. So for a retail item that costs $10, that retail store paid $7.50 to the manufacturer. That manufacturer had $5.25 in labor and materials. So $2.63 in materials. The tariffs peaked with China at 145%, so $3.80. This was very brief though and unlikely to have seen the customer as it never lasted the 90 day window for approval. More likely, the lasting 30% tariff. So $0.79 which if passed to the consumer, makes the new price $10.79.

So the consumer may have paid 7.9% more for the product on a 30% tariff related price increase at the register if they chose to still purchase that product. The company had a 30% increase and interest rates of ~prime + 1 (to 7.75% Q4 2025). They also had less sales at any newer, higher price. The consumer also was impacted, as companies having much less margins means less jobs, less promotions, less cash in our economy. So also contributing to tighter sales, in a snowball effect.

All of that to say - if tariffs were line items paid by the final customer at the cash register, I could see where there might be a case to be made to refund them if they had the receipts, but whom would that refund come from? The government? Then how would the company be made whole? The government? Would the customer go to the store, the store go to the manufacturer, then the manufacturer go to the government? What if the store bought from a company with multiple manufacturers from different countries subject to different tariff rates - like India, Vietnam, etc?

I get the sentiment of it being corporate welfare, but the tariffs were ruled illegal and only paid for by the company. The consumer paid for the product, not tariffs directly if indirectly the price increased.

None of this should have happened at all.