Trump Forced to Refund Tariffs to Companies

The Trump administration’s major tariff initiative from 2025 has taken an unexpected turn after the Supreme Court rejected the legal basis for the fees. Now U.S. authorities have begun repaying billions of dollars to companies that were previously forced to pay the tariffs.

The U.S. government has so far returned about $100 billion to importers and companies after the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs were halted by the court, reports CNBC.

This amount corresponds to approximately 60 percent of the total $166 billion that, according to the authorities’ own data, was collected through the extensive tariffs Donald Trump introduced in 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The tariffs became a central part of Trump’s economic policy and were used as a tool to pressure trade partners and strengthen the U.S.’s negotiating position with the rest of the world.

But at the end of February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not give the president the broad authority to implement the wide tariffs the administration had been using.

Following the court’s decision, federal judge Richard Eaton ordered that the tariff fees collected under the law be repaid to importers, which initiated an extensive administrative process for U.S. customs authorities.

Hundreds of Thousands of Companies Affected

To handle the large volume of repayment claims, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the end of April implemented a special system, Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), intended to collect and process company applications.

According to a court filing by CBP official Brandon Lord, the system had, as of July 31, received 252,496 repayment declarations linked to more than 25 million import entries.

In total, almost $129 billion in possible and already approved repayments have been registered in the system. Of these, about $100 billion has been finalized and sent to the Treasury Department to be paid out to companies eligible for the funds.

The process is ongoing even as several companies continue to question how the repayments are managed. The California-based import company Freestyle World, for example, has pursued a lawsuit seeking to establish a class action for smaller companies who believe they have faced obstacles in reclaiming the tariff fees they paid.

Trump Seeks New Paths for Tariffs

Despite the court’s decision, Donald Trump has continued to defend the tariff policy and claimed the fees were a major economic success for the U.S.

“Tariffs have been incredible. We’ve brought in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News.

At the same time, the president has worked to reintroduce similar tariff measures through other legal avenues after the IEEPA basis was rejected. The new tariff strategies, however, have already encountered their own legal challenges and are expected to undergo further judicial review.

As the administration works to find new ways forward, a comprehensive repayment process remains. Over 330,000 importers are reported to have paid tariffs under the IEEPA rules, spread over more than 53 million import declarations, meaning many companies are still waiting to get back the money they previously paid.