'Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs' [View all]

(TPM) "This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons."

"Damn, I thought: That’s a hot story, crooked as the day is long. But I’m not sure how I or we would track it down without better finance world sources. Still, it was worth some quick googling. It turns out this is happening and Cantor’s role has already been reported. Wired and others reported this more than a month ago."

"In mid-July, according to WIRED, Cantor was buying up the rights to your potential tariff refund at between 20 and 30 cents per dollar. Needless to say, I bet that price has gone up a lot since last Friday’s federal appellate court upheld the lower court ruling that almost all of Trump’s tariffs are illegal. So in paper terms Cantor has probably already made a ton of money on this."

Continued at link:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs