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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19263 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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Okay, not a constitutional rule.

But I suppose it might actually be against WTO rules.

Basically, any country which makes use of retroactive tariffs is not someone you would want to do business with. Nothing stopping them from nationalizing your company by retroactively applying a 500% tariff on all of the goods you have been importing in the last decade. This would not be much better or worse than just deciding to nationalize your company outright. Investors and creditors tend to hate such things.

Now, in this particular case, the retroactive tariffs would merely replace the unconstitutional ones. So one might frame it as "dear Mr foreigner, we had a minor judicial hiccup with the precise process of how to enact the tariffs, but don't worry, the amount on your bill is still correct".

Of course, the situation might be more accurately described as a chief of police deciding that local shops will need to pay for protection, and when a court says that this is not actually how things work, the city council instead tries to reframe the protection money as taxes so that they can keep it.

But if Congress will not authorize Trump's tariffs (which I believe and hope they won't), then all of that is moot.

A good indicator would be what a claim against the US gov for bogus tariffs is worth on the market at the moment, but it seems that these are not publically traded.

Sure in general. In this case where a retroactive tariff is merely enforcing an original tariff that was rescinded for technical legal reason seems different.

Basically, any country which makes use of retroactive tariffs is not someone you would want to do business with. Nothing stopping them from nationalizing your company by retroactively applying a 500% tariff on all of the goods you have been importing in the last decade.

And yet companies keep doing business with countries which are known to outright nationalize companies. It would be nice if doing shit like that had the high cost you might expect, but they don't.

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