Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have respectively released a mix of new flexibilities and requirements for single-family mortgages they purchase as April has gotten underway.
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Fannie is pulling back on some prefunding measures it had previously emphasized, while Freddie is making changes that affect loans in an underserved market that advocates and housing officials have long called a priority.
The U.S. government currently holds Freddie and Fannie in conservatorship and their policies play a large role in shaping the country’s housing market because they buy a significant number of mortgages made in the United States.
Fannie accounted for about $3.5 trillion outstanding U.S. mortgage-backed securities at the end of January, a government analysis of Recursion Co. data shows. Freddie accounted for nearly $3.06 trillion in outstanding MBS at that time, according to the data that Ginnie Mae analyzed.
Select highlights from the two government-sponsored enterprises’ recent guideline changes follow:
Fannie Mae’s changes
Fannie has removed a fixed 10% minimum sampling requirement for prefunding or preacquisition loan-quality checks, which can be adopted immediately and becomes mandatory July 1.
The government-sponsored enterprise said in a bulletin that it will now allow lenders to instead “design sampling methodologies that reflect their own risk profiles.”
Mortgage companies that work with Fannie must meet certain requirements if they use their own sampling methods.
“Fannie Mae may require adjustments or impose minimum sampling requirements if the lender’s approach does not provide adequate representation or effectively identify risk,” the enterprise warned in its update.
The GSE also removed reverification requirements for discretionary quality-control reviews, situations where information is “not confirmable” or where automated data from approved vendors is “duplicative.”
In addition, the enterprise has limited QC tax transcript requirements to loans where this information was used for qualification. The Internal Revenue Service’s tax transcripts have primarily come into play for government-related loans made to contract workers.
Freddie Mac’s updates
A recent Freddie bulletin extended the maximum term for cashout refinances of manufactured housing loans from 20 to 30 years with the aim of supporting “sustainable homeownership.”
The GSE also clarified existing policy with more specifics, noting that any junior lien paid down or off through a no-cashout manufactured-housing loan refinance must have been used to acquire the property.
In addition, Freddie announced in February that it is aligning some of its servicing policies related to forbearance and disaster-related loss mitigation with Fannie’s, effective May 1.
Aligned GSE changes
Both government-sponsored enterprises announced jointly late last week that they will be giving mortgage businesses they work with more time to implement a new version of the Uniform Closing Dataset.
“While adoption of UCD v2.0 continues to progress, the GSEs recognize there may be competing priorities, such as the upcoming Nov. 2, 2026, Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) 3.6 mandate,” they wrote.
New mandates for the initiative aimed at improving closing data quality are on track to be set in the fourth quarter of this year.
Also, single-family condo lenders that have utilized limited or streamlined reviews at Fannie and Freddie, respectively, have until Aug. 3 to phase out this practice and enforce tighter requirements for reserves, according to coordinated announcements last month.
Tighter condo lending standards like these have been offset by broader single-family flexibility in insurance requirements, which the mortgage industry and insurers have long sought.
Fannie and Freddie have both been accepting actual cash value policies for roofs on homes collateralizing single-family loans since they announced the change in conjunction with their oversight agency on March 18.
Allowing an exception to full-replacement cost requirements had become more pressing as a growing number of insurers have been unwilling to offer coverage meeting that standard and forcing homeowners to switch to ACV in jurisdictions where there aren’t rules prohibiting this.
Replacement cost policies must cover the current expense for repairs while ACV allows for depreciation. Fannie, Freddie and their oversight agency still require that borrowers obtain replacement cost coverage on all parts of a home except the roof.
Update 4/5/26: Bonus now $350 and extended until June 30, 2026.
Update 1/5/26: Bonus reduced to $300 but extended to 3/31/26.
Update 12/12/2025: Bonus increased to $400.
Offer at a glance
Maximum bonus amount: $400
Availability: Only in the following states: FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MI, NC, OH, TN, WV, SC (may be only for those within a 50-mile radius of a branch). A lot of the time you’ll need to go in branch to complete the account opening.
Direct deposit required: $500+
Additional requirements: None
Hard/soft pull: Soft
ChexSystems: Yes
Credit card funding: None
Monthly fees: None
Early account termination fee: None listed
Household limit: None
Expiration date: September 30th, 2017 December 31st, 2017. March 31st, 2018 June 30th, 2018September 30th, 2018December 31st, 2018March 31st, 2019April 30th, 2019 June 30th, 2019 October 31st, 2019. August 31, 2020.September 30th, 2020October 31, 2020 December 31, 2020 March 31, 2021 Note these offers are known to expire earlier than the expiration date so do not leave it to the last minute.
The Offer
Direct link to offer
Fifth Third is offering a $400 bonus when you open a new Fifth Third Essential checking account when you complete the following requirements:
Make direct deposits totaling $500 or more within 90 days of account opening
The Fine Print
Offer not available to existing checking or Express Banking customers or to those with a Fifth Third Checking or Express Banking account that has been closed within the last 13 months.
Bank reserves the right to limit each customer to one new account-related gift incentive per calendar year.
Essential Checking account must be opened between 1/1/2021 and 3/31/2021.
Bonus will be deposited into your new checking account within 10 business days of completing requirements.
Basic Checking, Express Banking and Business Checking accounts are excluded from this offer.
Bonus may be taxable as interest income and reported on IRS Form 1099-INT.
Avoiding Fees
Some states are able to open the Free Checking Account with Extra time (now called Momentum checking), that’s the best option if available. Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan all have the free option. Other states have another free checking offer.
Early Account Termination Fee
This account does not have an early account termination fee
Our Verdict
Fifth Third used to to offer a $300 bonus with no direct deposit or a $500 bonus with a direct deposit but neither of those offers have been seen since 2019. The standard bonus has been $300, so this is an increased offer by $100. We will be adding this to our best bank bonus page.
Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
A Beginners Guide To Bank Account Bonuses
Bank Account Quick Reference Table (Spreadsheet) (very useful for sorting bonuses by different parameters)
PSA: Don’t Call The Bank
Introduction To ChexSystems
Banks & Credit Unions That Are ChexSystems Inquiry Sensitive
What Banks & Credit Unions Do/Don’t Pull ChexSystems?
How To Use Our Direct Deposit Page For Bank Bonuses Page
Common Bank Bonus Misconceptions + Why You Should Give Them A Go
How Many Bank Accounts Can I Safely Open Within A Year For Bank Bonus Purposes?
Affiliate Links & Bank Bonuses – We Won’t Be Using Them
Complete List Of Ways To Close Bank Accounts At Each Bank
Banks That Allow/Don’t Allow Out Of State Checking Applications
Year to date, a sell-off in tech stocks has weighed on the S&P 500, which is currently down about 4%. Even so, the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven bull market may still have room to run. Morgan Stanley expects global AI spending to approach $3 trillion by 2028, with more than 80% of that spending still ahead.
That backdrop helps explain why leading tech companies continue to see robust demand that lines up with those forecasts. Here are two high-powered AI stocks worth considering on the dip.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Palantir Technologies
Shares of Palantir Technologies(PLTR 0.36%) are currently down 28% from their recent high. Yet the company is seeing accelerating demand for its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). It helps businesses and government agencies connect data, decisions, and operations in real time, making the most advanced AI models usable in day-to-day execution.
That differentiation is translating into high-value, long-term contracts and strong financial results. Last year, revenue grew by 56% to more than $4.4 billion. In the fourth quarter, growth accelerated to 70% year over year, driven by a 137% jump in U.S. commercial revenue.
Today’s Change
(-0.36%) $-0.53
Current Price
$147.93
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$355B
Day’s Range
$146.63 – $150.61
52wk Range
$66.12 – $207.52
Volume
25M
Avg Vol
49M
Gross Margin
82.37%
Palantir’s moat comes from helping large enterprises turn AI models into cost savings and measurable profits. That work deeply embeds its software in day-to-day operations, which raises switching costs and strengthens customer stickiness. This value supports lucrative customer contracts, allowing Palantir to convert roughly half of its revenue into free cash flow.
Palantir stock is richly valued, trading at high multiples of sales and profits. But if revenue growth and margins remain strong, that premium could be justified given the size of the opportunity ahead. The consensus analyst estimate calls for revenue to more than triple to nearly $15 billion by 2028.
2. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC)
The Motley Fool’s research shows Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing(TSM +0.70%) is one of the most valuable companies in the world, and for good reason. It is in a lucrative position, manufacturing leading-edge chips for Apple and many top semiconductor designers. The surge in demand for chips across consumer devices and data centers has helped it deliver market-beating returns for decades.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Today’s Change
(0.70%) $2.36
Current Price
$341.40
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$1.8T
Day’s Range
$338.60 – $344.05
52wk Range
$134.25 – $390.20
Volume
313K
Avg Vol
14M
Gross Margin
58.73%
Dividend Yield
0.99%
TSMC’s dominant share in advanced manufacturing means customers are often willing to pay a premium for its scale, reliability, and technical expertise. Last quarter, revenue reached $34 billion, up 25% year over year. Its 54% operating margin underscores the pricing power that comes with being irreplaceable at the cutting edge.
Many of its biggest customers are also leading cloud service providers. These customers have signaled that securing enough chips is a key bottleneck in their AI infrastructure plans, providing TSMC with good visibility into future demand. Management expects 25% annualized revenue growth through 2029, with AI-related chip revenue growing more than 50% per year.
The stock has slipped 13% from its recent highs. But with elite positioning, clear growth drivers, and a reasonable valuation at about 24 times this year’s earnings estimate, TSMC offers investors a compelling way to participate in the AI boom.
Early in my real estate investing journey, I went to an investor meetup. I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew I wanted to learn, meet people who were doing this, and figure out where to start.
The room was full of people who all wanted the same thing. Build real income through real estate. Create something that didn’t depend on trading time for a paycheck. I was there for the exact same reason.
But as I started listening to the conversations around me, something became clear.
Most people in that room were trying to solve a problem I didn’t have.
Some were figuring out how to scrape together a down payment. Others were deep in the weeds of fix-and-flip, learning construction timelines and contractor management, basically a second full-time job. A few were exploring wholesaling, finding deals and collecting finder’s fees, grinding to get any foothold at all.
A lot of them weren’t accredited investors yet, which meant whole categories of deals weren’t even available to them.
I remember being a little shy about mentioning I was a physician. It felt like I was already a step ahead. Like I was in the wrong room.
That night I started thinking about something I hadn’t fully appreciated before. What physicians have isn’t just a paycheck. It’s a structural head start that most aspiring investors would trade a lot to have.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Any investment involves risk, and you should consult your financial advisor, attorney, or CPA before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author and associated entities disclaim any liability for loss incurred as a result of the use of this material or its content.
If you’ve been circling ideas but still feel stuck, you’re not alone.
PIMDCON, the #1 Real Estate & Entrepreneurship Conference for Physicians, is where doctors finally stop spinning their wheels.
Leave with a plan and the confidence to move.
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Not All Starting Points Are Equal
Most financial content aimed at physicians focuses on what to do next. What asset class to explore, what strategy to follow, what income stream to add. That’s useful. But there’s a prior question that usually gets skipped.
What do you already have? And are you using it?
Physician income has two qualities that are rare when you find them together.
It’s high. Attendings across most specialties earn between $250,000 and $500,000 or more. With the cost of living increases we’ve all experienced, it doesn’t always feel that way. But relative to the general population, and relative to most aspiring investors, it’s substantial.
It’s relatively reliable. The profession is under real pressure. Reimbursements are tightening. Consolidation is reshaping employment. The security physicians felt a generation ago isn’t quite what it was. Worth naming honestly. But compared to most income sources, physician earning capacity is durable. The credential travels. The clinical skills can’t be easily outsourced. And most physicians are still generating consistent, verifiable income year over year.
High and reliable in combination is what most aspiring investors spend years trying to build. Physicians start with it.
Three Things That Income Actually Gives You
Here’s where the reframe gets practical. Physician income doesn’t just pay the bills. It unlocks three things most investors don’t have access to early in their journey.
Seed capital. Every investment I’ve ever made started as clinical income first. The real estate deals, the syndications, the funds. All of it originated as money earned from practicing medicine. That’s not a knock on investing. It’s just the reality of how capital formation works. You have to get money somewhere before you can put it to work.
The question most physicians skip is this: what is happening to that money between when it’s earned and when it gets deployed? For most, it sits in a checking account or gets absorbed into lifestyle. The shift is treating each paycheck as investable capital, not just consumption income. That one reframe changes everything downstream.
Borrowing power. Lenders understand physician income. There are physician-specific mortgage products that don’t require private mortgage insurance, that allow higher debt-to-income ratios, and that get underwritten differently because the income profile is considered low risk. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the market recognizing a structural advantage.
Physician income functions as a credibility signal in capital markets that most investors spend years building. A stable, verifiable income history changes what doors are open to you, from conventional mortgages to private deals to relationships with sponsors and operators who want to know you can follow through on a commitment.
A higher capacity to take risk. This one gets talked about the least, and it might matter the most.
Risk tolerance is usually framed as a psychological trait. How much volatility can you handle? How do you behave when a deal underperforms? But a lot of risk capacity is just math.
If your baseline is covered, if clinical income is stable enough that an investment going sideways doesn’t threaten your family’s stability, you can afford to be wrong sometimes. You can participate in deals that carry more upside and more uncertainty. You can be patient when markets shift. You can think in longer time horizons.
The physician income isn’t just money. It’s a floor. And having a floor changes what’s possible above it. Most of the people in that investor meetup were taking risk from a fragile base. That is a fundamentally different game.
Where Most Physicians Stall Out
Understanding the advantage is one thing. Using it is another.
The most common pattern I’ve seen, and honestly lived, is this. The income comes in, and lifestyle expands to meet it. Bigger house. Private school tuition. More overhead. More fixed costs. None of it unreasonable in isolation. All of it compounding in the wrong direction.
The lifestyle pressure is real. Comparing yourself to colleagues and neighbors is real. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But here’s the question worth asking: what percentage of your clinical income is actually being deployed into assets that produce income? Not saved in a low-yield account. Not absorbed into consumption. Actually working.
For most physicians, that number is smaller than it should be. Not because they lack discipline, but because no one ever framed the clinical income as a funding mechanism for anything other than life expenses.
The shift is treating a defined portion of your income as capital that exists for one purpose: to buy assets that generate income. Not as a sacrifice. As a strategy.
Every dollar redirected from consumption into a cash-flowing asset keeps working after that decision is made. Do that consistently, and at some point the passive income starts covering what the clinical income used to cover. That’s the exit ramp. Not quitting medicine dramatically. Just needing it less, gradually, until it becomes optional.
The physicians I know who get to practice on their own terms, who see patients because they want to rather than because they have to, are almost always the ones who made this reframe early. Even imperfectly.
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The Launchpad, Not Just the Landing Pad
Most physicians treat clinical income as the destination. The goal is to earn enough and keep enough so that life is comfortable. That’s understandable. But it undersells what the income is actually capable of.
Clinical income is seed capital. It’s collateral. It’s the floor that gives you the capacity to take calculated risk. And if you treat it as a funding mechanism rather than a landing pad, it becomes the thing that eventually makes itself optional.
The people in that investor meetup were working hard to get to a starting position that physicians already occupy.
Just something to think about.
PIMDCON 2026 — September 24-26, Dallas
PIMDCON was built for exactly this reason: a room where every physician already has the foundation, and the conversation can start from there. If that sounds like where you want to spend a few days this fall, details are at pimdcon.com. See you there!
Were these helpful in any way? Make sure to sign up for the newsletter and join the Passive Income Docs Facebook Group for more physician-tailored content.
Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.
Pepsi and Diageo have withdrawn their sponsorship of London’s Wireless Festival following a wave of political condemnation over the event’s decision to book Ye (formerly Kanye West) as its sole headliner for all three nights this summer.
Pepsi, which had served as the festival’s headline sponsor since 2015 under the branding “Pepsi MAX Presents Wireless,” confirmed its withdrawal on Sunday (April 5). “Pepsi has decided to withdraw its sponsorship of Wireless Festival,” the company said in a statement.
Hours later, spirits giant Diageo — parent company of the Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan brands — followed suit. “We have informed the organizers of our concerns, and as it stands, Diageo will not sponsor the 2026 Wireless festival,” said a company spokesperson.
The sponsorship withdrawals came after Ye was announced on Monday (March 30) as the headliner of all three nights of Wireless 2026, scheduled for July 10–12 at Finsbury Park in north London. The booking was billed as a “three-night journey through his most iconic records,” and marked the first time no other headliners were announced alongside him. Ticket presales were due to begin on Tuesday (April 7) via Ticketmaster, with general on-sale the following day.
The announcement drew swift criticism from senior UK political figures. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in a statement to The Sun, said: “It is deeply concerning Kanye West has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism.
“Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted firmly wherever it appears. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan distanced City Hall from the booking on Wednesday (April 1). “We are clear that the past comments and actions of this artist are offensive and wrong, and are simply not reflective of London’s values,” said a spokesperson for the Mayor. “This was a decision taken by the festival organizers and not one that City Hall is involved in.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey went further on Thursday (April 2), calling for Ye to be banned from entering the UK altogether. “We need to get tougher on antisemitism,” he said.
The Jewish Leadership Council called the booking “deeply irresponsible” in a statement to The Guardian, adding: “West has repeatedly used his platform to spread antisemitism and pro-Nazi messaging … Any venue or festival should reconsider before providing their platform to Kanye West to spread his antisemitism.”
With Pepsi and Diageo now out, attention has turned to the festival’s remaining sponsors. As of Sunday evening, PayPal, Budweiser and Beatbox were among those yet to issue a response. Rockstar Energy Drink, which is owned by PepsiCo in the UK, is also expected to withdraw, though this had not been confirmed at the time of writing.
Background
There also remains the question of whether Ye will be granted permission to enter the UK. As a US citizen, he would require clearance to perform. Australia revoked his visa in July 2025 after he released a track titled Heil Hitler in May of that year, with the country’s Home Affairs Minister saying the government would not “deliberately import bigotry.”
The 48-year-old published a full-page apology in The Wall Street Journal in January, attributing his behavior to a “four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior” linked to a brain condition. He has yet to make any public statements of contrition in anything other than written form.
Wireless is organized by Festival Republic, a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment. The festival had positioned Ye as its only announced act ahead of ticket on-sale, following Drake‘s three-night headline residency at the event in 2025. Ye last performed in the UK at Glastonbury in 2015.
The corporate exodus around Ye echoes the 2022 wave of partnership terminations that followed his antisemitic remarks, when Adidas, creative agency CAA, and others severed ties with the artist. Adidas said at the time that it expected the immediate termination of its Yeezy partnership to have a negative impact of up to €250 million on the company’s net income.
Live Nation, whose UK festival portfolio accounts for over 25% of UK festivals with a capacity above 5,000, according to data from the Association of Independent Festivals, has faced scrutiny over its market dominance in the country’s live sector. The company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, told investors late last year that he expected 2026 to be “back to kind of a normalized year across all of our platforms” following what he described as a “digestion” period in 2025.
Festival Republic had not issued a public response to the sponsor withdrawals at the time of writing.Music Business Worldwide
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What you’ll learn in this video
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I walk you through everything, from ideation and scripting to video creation and thumbnail design. The prompt document I mention is completely free and linked below.
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This video is for educational purposes only. Results may vary depending on effort, consistency, and execution. No income or view guarantees are promised.
2026.4 Update: Besides the $250 offer provided by BoA itself, third party website Rakuten offers an additional $250 cashback. Note that if you choose to earn MR on Rakuten you may see $0 additional cashback, you need to choose to earn cashback on Rakuten. HT: DoC.
2018.7 Update: The new offer is $250, and this is the best offer ever on this card!
Application Link
Benefits
$250 offer: earn 25,000 points after spending $1,000 in first 3 months. The value of these points is $250.
Earn 1.5x points per $1 spent on all purchases.
How to redeem the points: you can redeem the points for statement credit to cover travel expenses at a fixed ratio 1 cent/point. You can also redeem the points for cash or gift cards, but the ratio is very low.
BoA Preferred Rewards program: If you have checking/savings/brokerage account in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn additional points based on the amount of asset. Earn additional 25% rewards if you are in Gold tier ($20k or more in balance); 50% if Platinum tier ($50k or more in balance); 75% if Platinum Honors tier ($100k or more in balance).
No foreign transaction fee.
No annual fee.
Recommended Application Time
You can get it even without SSN and with no credit history at all! We recommend you go to the branch in this situation.
[New] 2/3/4 Rule: BoA will only approve you for at most: 2 cards per rolling 2 months; 3 cards per rolling 12 months; and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. Because their IT system hasn’t been fully updated yet, you may not get declined because of this rule. Instead, you may get approved at first, and then the account will be closed because of “approved in error”.
[New] 24 month churn rule: This card will not be available to you if you currently have or have had the card in the preceding 24 month period.
Summary
The sign-up bonus is quite good for a no annual fee card. It has no Foreign Transaction Fee (FTF) and no annual fee, so it is useful to those who need to make foreign purchases but do not want to pay annual fee. Besides, if you have $100k+ balance in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn 1.5%*(1+75%)=2.625% in return! This return is the highest among all credit cards for non-bonus category, and suitable for those who really spend a lot. The money in BoA or Merrill Edge is not required to be in form of cash, you can buy some MMF (Money Market Funds) which has very little risk (such as VMMXX), so there really isn’t much opportunity cost if you have such money. If you don’t have this amount of money in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can also consider PayPal Cashback Mastercard, which earns 2% cashback on everything, with no annual fee and no FTF (no sign-up bonus though).
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Portfolio managers, analysts, and financial advisors face a tough call when sharp volatility and rising geopolitical uncertainty upend markets. They ask: Do I adjust course, reduce risk, or buy the dip?
While the instinct is often to reduce risk, traditional financial theory suggests that investors should be rewarded for embracing uncertainty and remaining patient. However, theory and practice don’t always align, especially in high-stakes decisions.
Market practitioners often turn to two widely used indicators to guide their choices: the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) and the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (EPU). However, understanding the type of uncertainty you’re dealing with is critical, as misreading these signals can be costly.
The VIX and EPU are frequently treated as interchangeable stress signals. They shouldn’t be. The VIX reflects market fear, while EPU tracks broader policy rifts. Confusing the two can lead to systematic mistakes, either being overly cautious when policy uncertainty is high, but markets are calm, or not reacting swiftly when genuine fear sets in. Misinterpreting these indicators can result in poor timing and missed opportunities, ultimately impacting returns.
The key question to ask is whether uncertainty stems from market fear or broader policy confusion, each carrying distinct implications for risk, timing, and portfolio positioning. Analysis of 35 years of data shows that the VIX and EPU capture different dimensions of unpredictability, with important consequences for portfolio risk.
To explore how these differences play out in practice, I examine how each indicator predicts forward equity returns across five distinct regimes.
On technology, Dimon reiterated that “overall, the investment in AI is not a speculative bubble; rather, it will deliver significant benefits,” likening its impact to electricity and the internet and predicting it would have a “huge positive impact on productivity.”
At the same time, he wrote that all the capital spending by large tech firms – which he estimated at $450 billion in 2025 and roughly $725 billion in 2026 – is “probably inflationary in the short run.”
Dimon again attacked elements of US capital rules, calling parts of the Basel 3 Endgame and GSIB surcharge proposals “frankly nonsensical” and arguing they would force JPMorgan to hold “as much as 50% more capital across the vast majority of loans to US consumers and businesses” than some rivals.
While he acknowledged post‑2008 reforms had “accomplished some good things,” he said they also created “a fragmented, slow‑moving system” that “reduced productive lending” – an outcome mortgage bankers have long warned could push borrowers toward non‑bank channels.
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Low- and Middle-Income American families, and small businesses, accounting for well over half of our country’s population, paid out a disproportionate share of their incomes to the government due to IEEPA Tariffs recently struck down by the Supreme Court. Total payments amounted to roughly $175 billion. Now these families and small businesses face the prospect of receiving no rebates. Thus, the system is regressive for them on both the front and back ends — the burden of the original high tariffs and now the denial of rebates to compensate them.
As the result of the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announced April 2, 2025, retail prices rose by between 6 and 7 percentage points, costing the average American household between $400 and $600 — and many considerably more. For low-income families especially, this was a painful gouge into their incomes.
One might imagine that in the interest of fairness, rebates would automatically go to these families and small businesses. That is not the case. The way our system works, rebates go ONLY to importers who DIRECTLY paid the tariffs to the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) in the first place. The CBP estimates that 330,000 American importers actually paid the tariffs.
In contrast, 300 million-plus Americans assumed most of the burden virtually every time they went to the grocery store, bought a car, or purchased a pair of shoes, a dress, or a home appliance. Small businesses lost as well because most of the costs of the tariffs paid by larger importers or wholesalers were passed on to them. Most consumers and small businesses have NO clear recourse to getting any of their money back.
America’s importers that accounted for most of the tariff revenue were generally large retailers, big wholesalers, shippers, and companies that import components and raw materials to be incorporated in their manufactured goods. This group, accordingly, will receive the lion’s share of rebates from the U.S. Government through a relatively smooth, computerized process for which they are pre-registered.
Those American consumers who bought imported products after “Liberation Day” in stores, through websites, or in auto showrooms — who probably didn’t feel very “liberated” then — will feel even less so now. They will have NO access to the rebates. If they benefit at all, it would only be because some importing companies that DID receive rebates chose to pass the funds on to them. But this is not easy.
Doing so on a case-by-case, buyer-by-buyer, product-by-product basis would be highly complicated if not impossible for most companies. Restoring even a semblance of an equitable outcome would require a large company to use a broader approach — e.g., discounting consumer prices for a period of time, issuing gift credit cards to customers, or providing equivalent amounts to small retailers who sell their products in order to enable them to recoup their losses or pass the benefits on to their own customers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they are now working on new arrangements, but these may take a long time. Likewise, small businesses may consider engaging in lawsuits to recover their tariff costs, but these could be expensive and time-consuming. Many will go bankrupt waiting.
To be clear, this rebate conundrum, at its roots, is not the fault of large companies or importers, or of this administration. It is a byproduct of an older rebate system and a multi-layered distribution system.
But the perception — and reality — of unfairness is highly palpable. It needs to be addressed by a wide range of companies and government officials. CNN has done an especially good job interviewing small business owners who have been painfully harmed and forced to lay off employees. This overall unfairness and pain must be confronted. To make matters worse, unreturned money will be kept by the Treasury.
In the 2008–09 financial crisis, the government provided enormous support to large financial institutions but virtually none to small businesses, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of many such businesses and their employees, and millions of everyday, hard-working Americans. As was the case then, an inequitable solution now will further widen social and economic divisions and foment bitterness in this country.
Coming in tandem with currently skyrocketing oil prices and new sets of tariffs imposed by the president to replace the earlier ones, this situation is an especially bitter pill for low-income and even average families whose budgets are already stressed.
This situation fans the flames of social stress in this country. Businesses and the government must devise measures to address it. Whatever the government claims to be planning should be speeded up. In addition, several large companies that have constructively addressed this inequity already could share their techniques with others that have not. Both steps would make a bad situation better. Failure to do so would further pull apart our already highly divided society. All will suffer.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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