Americans Paid Trump's Tariff: Corporations Now Sit On $166 Billion Refund

The Customs and Border Protection opened its tariff refund portal on Monday. Roughly $166 billion in unlawful duties is now eligible to flow back, but U.S. consumers cannot file a claim.

The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump‘s emergency tariff regime in February, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the duties.

The Court of International Trade then ordered the federal government to build a refund mechanism. On Monday, that mechanism went live.

The cost of those tariffs landed on shoppers. The refund will land on companies.

Only Importers Can File For Tariff Refunds

Under U.S. trade law, only the “importer of record” — the company that filed the customs paperwork and paid CBP — can claim a refund. Consumers have no standing at the portal.

The scale is staggering: CBP court filings show 53 million shipments were assessed IEEPA duties, and the agency estimates up to 4.43 million hours of processing work to clear the backlog.

“Our sense is the majority of the refunds will be retained by the companies getting the refunds,” Steve Wyett, chief investment strategist at BOK Financial Corporation wrote.

“Exceptions might be made if consumers can ‘prove’ they paid a directly attributable tariff charge.”

According to the expert, an estimated $127 billion of the $166 billion collected is realistically refund-eligible.

Because many IEEPA tariffs have already been reimposed under Section 122 and Section 232 authorities, Wyett added, “it seems unlikely consumers will see lower prices from tariff refunds.”

The more likely outcome is a one-time boost to corporate profitability and liquidity.

Yet the consumer paid the tariff. Analysis from the Budget Lab at Yale found that tariffs accounted for roughly 86% of the rise in imported household goods prices through January 2026.

FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) said it will attempt to pass refunds to customers who paid an itemized tariff line.

Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) told The New York Times it will use the refunds to lower prices — though not for the same shoppers who paid the original markup, a framing that has already drawn class-action interest.

As of March 30, 2026, just 26,664 importers had registered for CBP’s Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system, which routes refunds.

Those firms accounted for roughly $120 billion of the total refund pool, according to a court filing by Brandon Lloyd, CBP’s executive director of trade programs.

That is 8% of eligible importers claiming more than 72% of the refund value. Average big-filer claim: $4.5 million. The remaining 300,000-plus small importers are chasing the other $46 billion, averaging roughly $150,000 each.

The Parallel Process: Consumer Class Actions

Because the CBP portal offers U.S. consumers no path to file, the only route to direct refunds is through the courts.

That path is now open, and crowded.

Proposed class-action suits have been filed against at least five major corporations: Costco Wholesale Corporation, EssilorLuxottica Société anonyme (the maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses), Fabletics Inc., United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE:UPS), and FedEx Corporation.

The allegation in each case is essentially the same — that the companies charged customers tariffs on goods that have now been ruled unlawful, and that customers have a right to be made whole regardless of whether the company itself recovers from the government.

The Hedge Fund Trade On Tariff Refunds

A secondary market for tariff refund claims has emerged over the past two months, and pricing has moved quickly.

Wall Street did not wait for CBP’s portal. A secondary market in refund claims has been active since well before Monday’s launch, and Hedge Week reported that hedge funds across London, New York, and other major financial hubs have been scaling up their positions since the February Supreme Court ruling.

The structure is simple. An importer sells the right to its future refund at a discount in exchange for cash today. The buyer — typically a hedge fund, a specialist credit investor, or a litigation financier — absorbs the timing and legal risk, and keeps whatever CBP eventually pays out.

Pricing has repriced higher as legal visibility has improved. Claims that traded at deep discounts before the February ruling are now commanding materially firmer levels, particularly for larger, cleaner portfolios. Claims that traded for 20 cents on the dollar before the Supreme Court ruling are now changing hands at up to 60 cents on the dollar.

The net effect: a meaningful share of the $127 billion in refund-eligible claims could ultimately settle not on the balance sheets of the companies that paid the tariff, and certainly not in the wallets of the consumers who bore it, but on the books of financial intermediaries that bought the claim at a discount.

Image via Shutterstock/ Tama2u