One suspect, fifty thefts, two retailers, three pawn shops, and a release order that did not hold for a single afternoon. The case will close eventually. The merchandise will be partially recovered. The store will absorb the rest as shrink. None of that is the same as the merchandise never leaving the floor.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates will reach $166 billion in refunds for tariffs the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in February. The money at stake is enormous. The process is narrower than the headlines suggest, and the impact on retailers will not be distributed evenly.

Think about it this way. A retailer absorbing a 10 percent tariff increase on a product that already carried a slim margin might be making two or three dollars of profit on a 30 dollar item. Lose that item to theft, and the store has not just lost the profit. It has lost the landed cost of the goods, the tariff paid on import, and the labor it took to get the product onto the shelf. In a tariff environment, every stolen item represents a bigger financial hit than it did two years ago.