Yes, the government is surely going to litigate whether it needs to refund tariffs to the importer of record, and will likely make other frivolous arguments as to why not refunds are due.
My hope is the court that handles this will quickly order the payments to be made, and toss aside any garbage arguments.
I have gotten refunds from companies found to have misrepresented their products bases solely on their purchase record - I don’t even have to file a claim
It can be done for this too.
“Can be done” and “will be done” are in two different universes . . . .
Everything is Nothing unless and until Enforcement Mechanisms are used. And we’ve seen exactly none of that so far …
What about small importers that are hanging on by a thread?
Not all wine importers are filthy rich behemoths, and to pretend otherwise (with intent or by omission) is a misrepresentation of reality to score a cheap point.
10% feels like a pragmatic backdown to save him from a backlash from those countries who concluded tariff negotiations.
Making a deal and then breaking it, might cause a lot of headaches.
EU has already decided to pause finalizing the trade “deal” they made with the U.S.
Tariffs (non-wine related business) raised my wholesale pricing which in turn raised the end user pricing. I’m not a sponge. Small business keeps the economy afloat and I’m not here to absorb the bad government policies. I’m here to earn a living.
If importers are not passing the cost of tariffs on to their customers all I can ask is why not?
Because the countries on which the tariffs are slapped are paying the tariffs? 
Prices are often determined by what the market can bear. In some sectors manufacturers, importers, distributors all took a small haircut to keep end pricing stable - for a while at least. There’s also strategy to business - keep my prices lower to attract customers from other businesses that raised prices faster. But naturally, eventually the margins will return to whence they came.
I agree that prices are often determined by what the market can bear. For this reason, I’m not convinced that I, as a consumer, would be entitled to any damages simply because wine prices reflect tariffs or other cost factors. Ultimately, consumers choose to purchase wine at the prevailing market price, regardless of what drives those prices.
This situation differs from that of importers, who may face contractual obligations with producers or hold inventory that they need to move. These parties are more directly impacted by tariffs and related costs.
The only scenario where I would feel justified in seeking a refund is if I explicitly paid an additional amount due to tariffs as a distinct line item. For example, if I purchased futures and, upon shipment, my distributor billed me separately for tariffs, then I would expect a refund if those tariffs were later removed or reduced.
From what I know in the wine world it is a combination of both producer and importer take less money while the customers pays a little more. It is spread out. Of course every situation is different.
Not in all cases.
It’s not that importers are not passing all or some of the cost on, it’s that the government has nothing to do with whether they do and the degree to which they do. If a retailer charges a customer sales tax as a government-mandated item, where the government requires the retailer to charge X%, and only X%, for the tax, as a separate line item, and then collect it from the retailer’s customer and remit it to the state, it’s one thing. But here, again, any given importer who paid $1 million in tariffs may have eaten all of that cost, or raised prices to recover $500k of it, or all of it, or even may have used tariffs as an excuse to gild the lilly and raised prices by $1.2 million. There’s no government-mandated pass-through for the taxing authority to follow to refund the unlawful taxes to anyone other than the one who paid them. Doesn’t mean the downstream folks didn’t pay more and take it in the shorts because of the unlawful taxes, it just means that there’s no conceivable refund mechanism to identify them, and how much more they paid, from importer to manufacturer to distributor to retailer to customer (to use one potential example). So (IMO) to the extent there’s a court-mandated process for the government to refund the tariffs, they will go to the importer and that (IMO) will be the end of the process.
But also again, it may be that a given importer passed the tariff on dollar-for-dollar as a line item with an agreement to refund if they get a refund. But even in that case, what do you do with an importer who passed $1 million in tariffs on, dollar-for-dollar, to their customer base but then had to spend $250k on lawyers to sue the government to get their $1 million back? Are the customers going to be cool with getting back 75 cents on the dollar?
At the end of the day I remain convinced that what I’ve been saying in this thread is how it is going to work - the importers will get refunds (at significant delay and expense or in a relatively easy process remains TBD) and anything beyond that will be a matter of whether the importers agreed to do anything by way of contract with a customer, or whether the importer decides to do something voluntarily.
I’m not saying that’s the most fair way, or the way that will make everyone whole, I’m just saying that that’s the only method the courts and the government are equipped to carry out.
There are two small importers in the Portland market, New Wave Wine and Petit Monde, that I like to support since they direct import interesting wines at fair prices. I doubt either company even has 15 employees. I know the tariffs have hurt them and they can’t pass on the full cost since it would put a lot of their wines into price ranges where they wouldn’t sell. New Wave has a great cru Beaujolais portfolio of some less known, under the radar producers, but in the Portland market, most of those wines won’t sell if they’re priced higher than the mid to upper 20’s. So if they don’t trim their margins they’ll be stuck with wines they can’t sell.
So, yeah, wanting companies to get their tariff payments back doesn’t automatically mean I’m trying to support companies like Southern, but there are people here who equate the two.
Of course but the majority of producers & importers I know are handling it this way.
OK. But don’t imply that is the universal method.
Yes sir : )
I completely understand your point about tariff refunds. That’s not my concern. People thinking that they’re going to get refunds for tariffs are peeing into the wind. I’m saying there’s no reason for the business to be absorbing the cost of these tariffs. It’s a cost of doing business and it should be passed on to the end user. Period. not as a line item, but as an increased cost of goods. Absorbing these costs gives the end users a false sense that the country producing the products of paying the tariff since they don’t see it in their cost of goods. All that money is going to make their lives better because the government loves them. Yeah, right. Reality bites.
That won’t happen. Individuals didn’t pay any tariffs. They just had the cost of the tariffs passed on to them, mostly by merchants that didn’t pay the tariffs either, but that also had the cost of the tariffs passed on to them by the importers that paid them. Importers can - perhaps - sue the government to get the illegal tariffs back (keeping in mind it’s the government who decides when it can be sued…). But whatever recourse their customers and their customers’ customers have is purely a matter of contract between consumer and merchant or merchant and importer. Nobody’s getting their money back in a class action. (I do class actions for a living)