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Photo: Ana Martinez, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, 2016

Trump’s Struck-Down Tariffs: $100 Billion in Refunds Is Headed Back to Importers — Not to Shoppers

By Plainly Now News Desk AI-generated article

The federal government has certified roughly $100 billion in refunds of the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February and moved the money to the U.S. Treasury Department to be paid out. The refunds — duties plus interest — go to the businesses that paid the tariffs at the border. None of it flows directly to shoppers, and there is no process that would send it to them.

As of July 31, approximately $100 billion in refunds “have been sent to the U.S. Department of Treasury for disbursement.” How much of that has actually landed in company bank accounts is a number the court filings do not give — the count stops at the handoff to Treasury.

The quoted words are from a sworn declaration by Brandon Lord, the executive who runs trade programs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He filed it August 4, 2026 in the U.S. Court of International Trade, and Judge Richard K. Eaton quoted it in an order the next day.

Key facts

  • Certified and sent to Treasury: about $100 billion, as of the court record’s July 31 snapshot.
  • Accepted for processing: about $128.68 billion in refund claims, taken in through CBP’s CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) tool as of that same snapshot.
  • Assessed: about $166 billion charged under the emergency-powers (IEEPA) tariffs, across more than 53 million import entries, counting from February 3, 2025.
  • Stuck: about $1.6 billion — 19,726 individual refunds — waiting on bank account details the importers have not supplied.
  • Who is paid: the importer of record, or the licensed customs broker that filed its entries, by direct deposit. No paper checks, and no route for a consumer.
  • Next court checkpoint: a government progress report on the refunds on August 25, with a closed settlement conference the day after — court supervision, not refund deadlines.

Why the money is coming back

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the law President Trump used for his “Liberation Day” tariffs — “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” Those duties, a baseline 10% on imports from nearly every trading partner with higher rates for dozens of countries, had been collected since April 2, 2025. An executive order issued the day of the ruling ended the duties, and the trade court then directed CBP to reprocess affected import entries without the IEEPA charges — for every importer, not only the ones that sued.

Three numbers, one

The big dollar figures in the court record are not competing totals — they are one pot of money at three stages, and each stage has its own label:

  • About $166 billion — assessed: CBP’s estimate of everything charged under the IEEPA tariffs, across more than 53 million import entries. The count starts on February 3, 2025, two months before “Liberation Day” — earlier than the April launch most people remember. It starts there because IEEPA also carried drug-trafficking tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and the Supreme Court’s ruling struck those down too.
  • About $128.68 billion — accepted for processing: the refund claims CBP had taken in through CAPE, the refund tool it built inside its ACE trade portal, as of the court record’s July 31 snapshot.
  • About $100 billion — certified and sent to Treasury: the portion CBP had signed off on and handed to the Treasury Department to pay out as of that same snapshot — more than half of the $166 billion CBP estimates was assessed.

The entries still in dispute are the old ones — imports whose paperwork customs closed out long ago. Whether those qualify for a refund at all is being fought over in court, which is why the gap between the first number and the other two is not a simple countdown to zero.

The $1.6 billion going nowhere

About $1.6 billion — 19,726 individual refunds — has not been sent to Treasury at all, because the importers have not supplied the bank account details the government needs to pay them.

Who gets paid — and who doesn’t

Refunds go only to the importer of record — the business named on the customs paperwork — or through the licensed customs broker that filed its entries, by direct deposit into a verified U.S. bank account. No paper checks are issued, and there is no route for a consumer who paid higher store prices to claim a share.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it bluntly in February, saying he doubted “the American people” would see the money and calling the refunds “ultimate corporate welfare.” Democrats on the Senate Joint Economic Committee estimate that between February 2025 and January 2026, consumers absorbed about $231 billion in tariff costs — roughly $1,745 per family.

Shoppers are pressing that point in court: consumer class actions filed in the spring against Five Below, Sony, Nintendo and Amazon accuse the retailers of keeping their refunds rather than passing the savings on. Some big importers have announced their own numbers — Apple about $2.2 billion, Amazon about $600 million — though those are company disclosures, not government-confirmed figures.

This is also not the “$2,000 tariff check.” That idea — a per-person tariff dividend floated in Congress — has never been enacted and remains stalled in committee, and it has no connection to these business refunds. State officials have warned about scam texts promising “tariff rebate” payments to individuals.

How an importer actually claims a refund

  • Who can file: the importer of record, or the broker that filed its entries.
  • What to file: a CAPE Declaration — essentially a spreadsheet of entry numbers — through CBP’s ACE Secure Data Portal, available since April 20, 2026.
  • How long it takes: CBP says valid refunds are generally issued within 60 to 90 days after a declaration is accepted.
  • What it costs: CBP charges no fee to process a refund.
  • Deadline: No government-wide filing deadline appears in the court record or in CBP’s published refund guidance.

The one step the court itself urged on businesses: those whose refunds sit in the stuck $1.6 billion need to supply their bank account information before the money can move to Treasury.

The tariff fight is not over

The Justice Department appealed the trade court’s nationwide refund order to the Federal Circuit on June 2, and that appeal is still pending — no final decision has come down. Meanwhile, imports did not stop being taxed: the administration imposed new tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on some 60 economies, published July 28 and justified on forced-labor grounds. These rest on a different trade law: February’s ruling addressed only IEEPA, and the new duties stay in effect unless a court strikes them down separately. In early August, a coalition of 25 states sued in the Court of International Trade — Oregon et al. V. Trump — calling the new duties a pretext to recreate the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down. That case is at the allegation stage, with no ruling yet.

Trump has defended tariff policy broadly. Fox News quoted him in early August saying, “Tariffs have been incredible. We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars,” and that the Supreme Court “gave us a little shot, but we’re allowed to do it in a different manner” — remarks about tariffs in general. As of August 6, no comment from him or the White House on the $100 billion figure itself had been reported.

Judge Eaton’s order sets the next dates: the government owes the court a progress report on the refunds on August 25, and a closed settlement conference follows the day after. Both are checkpoints in the court’s supervision of the payouts — not deadlines for anyone waiting on a refund.

Sources and further reading

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