The Scramble Is On for Businesses to Get Their Tariff Refund Checks

Ryan Petersen (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

Do you think you and I are gonna start getting checks because they struck down the tariffs, right? And according to economists, consumers pay the tariff. So if consumers pay the tariffs and they strike down the refund, shouldn't we get the money?

Tracy Alloway (0:35)

I have often said, Joe, I buy a lot of stuff, especially from abroad, a lot of weird stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm running a small logistics company. And I will say, so I know it's the importer of record who actually pays the tariffs and is supposedly supposed to get the refund. However, I've had a few instances where the postal service will deliver something to my house, especially in Connecticut. And while they're there, we'll say, you owe us $50 in cash as a tariff payment. And I'm literally standing on my door, paying out cash and it's going somewhere. So I feel very much like I actually have paid the tariffs pretty much directly to the Trump government. Like there is something very visceral.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

Tracy, I have some bad news too.

Tracy Alloway (1:20)

I know, I know.

Joe Weisenthal (1:22)

The person who did that was a con artist who showed up.

Tracy Alloway (1:24)

No, it wasn't.

Joe Weisenthal (1:25)

And they said, and they duped you into thinking that because I have never heard of someone having to pay cash.

Tracy Alloway (1:31)

You're not buying enough from abroad. No, it's definitely true. I got the bill online and then you can either pay online or you can pay the postal guy in cash. It's very strange.

Joe Weisenthal (1:40)

I've never heard of that. Anyway, everyone wants their money back. How that's going to happen, what the time frame is, there's going to be major court fights. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning and it said that the scale of the suits to recover it is going to be, quote, the same level as bestest levels, which famously was multiple decades of lawsuits.

Tracy Alloway (2:01)

Also gave birth to an entire portion of the legal industry. Lots of Mesothelioma lawyers out there.

Joe Weisenthal (2:08)

Sometime later, I'll tell you, I was briefly part of that industry as a data collector for it.

Tracy Alloway (2:12)

That's interesting.

Joe Weisenthal (2:13)

Yeah, it's fun. Anyway, we got to figure out how it's all going to happen, because we know all these big companies, they want their money back. Of course, there's new tariffs already in the Trump administration. After losing one tariffs, they're putting in a different one. That's probably going to have court fights, et cetera. We also know that there was a popular secondary market in claims that Wall Street banks were facilitating. And so this is going to be a mess. It's probably going to stand for years. We got to figure out how companies are actually in the process of getting their money back, and whether they'll ever see it, or whether at all go to the lawyers.

Tracy Alloway (2:44)

Well, this is the other thing. I know you and I live in perpetual fear of paperwork and bureaucracy. And this, in particular, just strikes me as the biggest nightmare of paperwork and bureaucracy. You know, for some of the tariffs, you're calculating them by the proportion of the tariffed item in the thing you're buying. So steel and aluminum, how much of this thing is actually steel? It just seems like a nightmare. The whole thing of custom seems like a nightmare, still very antiquated.

Joe Weisenthal (3:14)

We got to learn more about this nightmare, about this chaos. And who do we talk to when we want to learn more about not the theoretical stuff that about trade that economists talk about, which I love them too, but the actual nuts and bolts of moving things. Of course, the perfect guest, Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport joins us today. So Ryan, thanks for coming back on Odd Lots.

Ryan Petersen (3:36)

It is great to be with you. And Tracy, that person may have been an impersonator of a postman, but it is illegal to impersonate a postman. I tried to be one for Halloween and you can't buy a postman's outfit. I had to borrow one. I made friends with the mailman and he gave me his to borrow, but he was like, I will get fired if anyone finds out.

Tracy Alloway (3:51)

Guys, I'm just gonna be very clear. It wasn't a scam. The guy had my package. I had the bill. I've received the package. Customs isn't going after me for unpaid bills. It's just weird. It's weird, but I think it speaks to like, a lot of Americans will feel like they have paid these tariffs extremely directly.