The Official Lie They Sold Us
The Fairy Tale: “China Will Pay For It!”
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Remember the rallies? The booming declarations from the podium promising a new era of American economic dominance, all built on one simple, powerful, and utterly fraudulent premise: that the tariffs slapped on billions of dollars of imported goods were going to be paid by China. It was a masterpiece of political theater. A beautiful lie. They sold it to working-class families across the country who were desperate for a win, desperate to believe that someone was finally fighting for them against the big, bad globalist machine. They made it sound like we were sending a bill directly to Beijing, that the U.S. Treasury would be flooded with foreign cash, punishing our adversaries for their supposed unfair trade practices.
What a load of garbage. It was a lie then, and it’s an even more insulting lie now, laid bare by the very corporations that acted as the government’s tax collectors in this whole charade. A tariff, by its very definition, is a tax paid by the entity importing the goods into the country. It’s not a magical fee that leaps across the Pacific Ocean and debits a foreign government’s bank account. It’s a boring, domestic import duty. The importer—a company like Costco, or Walmart, or the small business down the street that builds custom furniture—pays the tax to U.S. Customs the moment the goods hit our shores. It is, and always has been, a direct tax on American companies. And what do companies do when they’re hit with a new tax? They don’t just eat the cost out of the goodness of their hearts (bless their souls). They pass it on. Every single penny. They pass it on to you.
The Justification: “It’s For National Security!”
When the lies about who pays started to fray at the edges, they pivoted. They pulled out the ultimate trump card (no pun intended), the one that’s designed to shut down all debate: national security. The tariffs, specifically the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum that Costco is now suing over, were supposedly enacted to protect our domestic industries vital for national defense. We couldn’t possibly build tanks and fighter jets with foreign steel, could we? The argument was that countries like Canada, Mexico, and even our allies in Europe, were somehow a threat to our ability to defend ourselves. It’s an argument so flimsy it’s practically transparent.
Think about it for one second. Was the American military-industrial complex truly on the verge of collapse because we were importing steel from our next-door neighbor and closest trading partner, Canada? It was a laughable assertion used to grant the executive branch sweeping, almost monarchical power to wage economic war without the consent of Congress. It was a pretext. A fig leaf. The goal was never really about national security; it was about protectionism for a few politically connected domestic industries who got to jack up their prices behind the tariff wall, while every other industry that *uses* steel—from car manufacturers to construction companies to the guy making washing machines—got hammered with higher costs. Costs that, once again, were passed right down the line until they landed squarely in your lap at the cash register. You paid for it. Not them.
The Truth That’s Hitting Your Wallet
Costco’s Lawsuit: The Big ‘We Told You So’
And now, here comes Costco. The giant of bulk buying, the purveyor of the $1.50 hot dog, is suing the United States government. Why? Because they want a refund. This lawsuit is the smoking gun, the final piece of evidence confirming that the entire tariff war was a massive fleecing of the American consumer. Costco isn’t filing this lawsuit as a noble champion for the little guy. Let’s be crystal clear about that. They aren’t trying to get your money back for you. They are fighting to get *their* money back—the money they paid in tariffs to the government, money which they already collected from you and me every time we bought an appliance, a set of tools, or even canned goods packaged in steel or aluminum.
This is the great unmasking. For years, we were told this was a patriotic economic battle. But what this lawsuit reveals is the grubby reality. It’s just two giants—a massive corporation and the federal government—squabbling over a pile of cash. Your cash. Costco is basically saying, “Hey, we think the legal basis for that tax you made us collect from our customers was shaky, so we want the money back.” They have no legal or moral obligation to then turn around and refund that money to the millions of shoppers who actually paid the higher prices. They won’t. That money, if they win, goes straight to their bottom line, to their shareholders, to executive bonuses. It vanishes into the corporate ether.
You Paid the Price, They Want the Refund
This is the core of the whole rotten enterprise. Every extra dollar you spent because of these tariffs is a dollar you don’t have for gas, for groceries, for your kid’s education. It was a hidden tax, snuck into the price of everything, and you paid it without even knowing the full extent. It was a direct wealth transfer from the pockets of working families to the coffers of the U.S. Treasury, and now a multi-billion dollar corporation is trying to claw that money back for itself. It’s a perfect, closed-loop system of exploitation. The government imposes a regressive tax that hits the poor and middle class the hardest, a big corporation acts as the middleman, and then the corporation sues the government to get the loot. The one person left out of the entire equation? You. The one who actually paid for all of it.
This isn’t just about Costco, either. They are just one of thousands of companies that paid these tariffs. This case, and the Supreme Court’s potential ruling, opens the floodgates. But the principle remains the same. Whether the money stays with the government (which will just waste it on some other program) or it goes back to a corporate giant, it’s never returning to its rightful owner. The system is designed to ensure that. The political class gets to pound its chest and look tough on trade, a few favored domestic industries get rich, and the big importers eventually get their money back. It’s a win-win-win for everyone in power. And a total loss for the rest of us. It is the very definition of a rigged game.
The Swamp Always Wins
So what happens next? The Supreme Court will make a ruling on the legality of the president’s authority to impose these tariffs under such a broad and, frankly, ridiculous interpretation of “national security.” Maybe they’ll rule the tariffs were an overreach of executive power. Maybe they won’t. But here’s my prediction: it doesn’t matter one bit for you and your family. No matter which way the court decides, you will not see a dime. If the government wins, they keep the money you were overcharged. If Costco and other corporations win, they get the money you were overcharged. See the pattern? You are nothing but an ATM in their game.
This Costco lawsuit should be a wake-up call for every single person who believed the populist rhetoric that came out of Washington. It shows that at the end of the day, the interests of the political elites and the corporate giants are far more aligned with each other than they are with yours. They create the crisis, they profit from the crisis, and then they fight amongst themselves over the spoils. The entire trade war wasn’t about patriotism. It was a racket. A massive, nationwide racket. And you picked up the tab.
