Sometimes I feel like one of the characters in “Waiting for Godot,” Samuel Beckett’s famous play where nothing much happens and yet suspense somehow builds until … nothing happens again. Whoever Godot is, he never makes an appearance. The wait goes on and on.

It’s a little like waiting for shoes to drop. One … one … one … when will that second shoe hit the floor?

When is a Tax not a Tax?

The object of my frustration is the Trump tariff case that is being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The tariffs apply to and distort trade for thousands of products, including wine.

The basic issue is whether the tariffs of 2025 were legally implemented. Tariffs are a tax on imports that discourage imports and raise revenue (about $30 billion per month during the last half of 2025). The Constitution requires that revenue acts must originate in the House of Representatives and therefore cannot be imposed by edict from above. The architects of the Constitution had understandable concerns about taxation without representation, as you may remember from your history classes.

Congress has given the President power to “regulate” international trade in some circumstances, but tariffs are not specifically mentioned in this regard. The law is more commonly applied to trade embargoes, which prohibit trade, but don’t generate revenue of any sort.

Do the tariffs tax or do they regulate? The Administration argues for regulate, but President Trump inconveniently brags about the revenue haul. Experts speculate that the Supreme Court will strike down some but not all of the tariffs on the basis of the regulate/revenue distinction. Stay tuned.

When Will The Supreme Court Rule?

This is the Godot question because we have already been waiting for a while for an answer. The ruling may be released later this week (the date February 20 is often mentioned), but there is no set timetable. The wait could extend into the spring.

How will the Trump Administration respond?

If the Supreme Court rules against some of the tariffs, Administration officials have suggested that they will act quickly to re-impose them under different laws with different justifications. Such action is likely to result in legal action, of course.

This means that the final status of the tariffs could be tied up in the courts for a long time, extending the Godot problem into 2027 or beyond. So February 20, if that turns out to be the Supreme Court decision day, may not be the end of the play but merely the start of the next act.

Follow the Money

If a tax is improperly levied it should be refunded. I’m not a constitutional scholar, but that seems a reasonable principle. So even if improperly imposed tariffs are replaced by new proper ones (if that happens), it seems like the previous payments should be refunded. Do you agree? Or is this some sort of “finders keepers” situation where the government keeps the revenue it should not have collected in the first place?

Making those who bore the burden of the taxes whole is not necessarily an easy task, since costs were often passed on through the value chain. In economic terms, it is a difference between legal incidence of the tax (who wrote the check to the government) and economic incidence (who paid the ultimate cost). If you paid more for a car because of tariffs on steel, aluminum, or imported parts for it, or if you had your hours cut at a factory because of declining profits or sales due to higher costs, then you suffered the economic incidence. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a tariff refund check.

The problem is made more complicated by the vast sums involved. If the government is forced to issue bonds to borrow the refund money, the impact on interest rates and credit availability could be jaw-dropping. I expect the refunds, if there are any, will be tied up in court, too.

Who Really Paid the Tariffs?

Some of the people who favor the tariffs act as though they are a tax on foreign producers or governments, but in fact the tariffs are mainly collected from U.S. firms who then attempt to pass them on to clients and customers or bear them as higher costs. There is only a foreign burden if imposing the tax drives down world prices, spreading the impact abroad.

Last week the New York Federal Reserve Bank research department released a study that found that 90 percent of the tariff burden fell on domestic consumers in the form of higher prices and on domestic firms in the form of higher costs. This is actually a bit lower than previous studies that put the figure at 96 percent.

Much of the burden of the tariffs, however, takes the form of what didn’t happen, not what did, because taxes both raise price and reduce quantity exchanged. Thus a full accounting of the burden must include the lost utility of the final goods that were not imported because of the tariff costs and the lost value of U.S. exports that didn’t happen because imported parts and raw materials were too costly or not available. One reason that the inflation impact of the tariffs so far is so modest is that inflation only measures what did happen while much of the real burden is related to what didn’t happen.

So what’s not happening is important. That’s a real Waiting for Godot situation.

Tit for Tat

But we won’t really know the score until we see how foreign governments and consumers decide how to react to the evolving tariff situation. Checkers is one of the first board games that children learn to play and they quickly learn about tit for tat and the need to think several moves ahead. How will gains and losses be distributed when the dust finally settles?

So there is a long road ahead of us before we know what will happen about tariffs. I hope the insiders are right and that the Supreme Court will get the process started on February 20.

Until then I’ll be here … waiting for Godot.