WASHINGTON — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has refunded $100 billion in tariffs to American importers, roughly 60 percent of all revenue the government collected under President Trump's struck-down "Liberation Day" policy, according to a court filing described by the BBC.
The tally is the largest disclosure yet of money leaving the U.S. Treasury under a Supreme Court decision in February that ruled the administration's use of a 1977 emergency-powers statute unlawful. Until now, the scale and beneficiaries of the refund process have been visible chiefly in scattered second-quarter earnings reports, where some of the largest U.S. importers have booked hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time gains.
What the filing shows
Customs and Border Protection said nearly $29 billion in additional refund claims are still under review by trade authorities, according to the BBC's account of the filing. Another $1.6 billion in approved refunds is on hold because importers have not supplied banking details for the payouts.
Tariffs are taxes paid by domestic businesses and importers when foreign goods clear customs, not by overseas governments or exporters. Under U.S. customs law, only the importer that actually paid a duty can file a refund claim — a structure that leaves any pass-through to shoppers entirely to the discretion of individual companies.
Where refunds are landing
The refunds are turning up as one-time boosts in second-quarter results.
Amazon received about $600 million in the quarter, finance chief Brian Olsavsky said on the company's earnings call. Olsavsky said Amazon would pass money back to customers where a specific charge could be traced to a specific product, and would apply the rest toward lower prices across its stores.
Nintendo recorded "approximately $300 million as a reduction of cost of sales" in the three months ended June 30, the company said in its financial results. Operating profit for the quarter jumped 150.5 percent from a year earlier, to 142.5 billion yen, or about $902 million, compared with 56.9 billion yen a year earlier. Software sales rose 9.2 percent for the Switch 2 console and 38.6 percent for the original Switch. Hardware sales of the Switch 2 came in at 3.82 million units, down from 5.82 million in the year-earlier quarter but up from 2.49 million in the previous quarter.
The consumer question
Nintendo raised prices on both Switch consoles over the past year and has argued that it — not shoppers — bore the cost of the Liberation Day tariffs, meaning it is under no obligation to share the refund. The company is defending that position in court against a class-action suit alleging it is retaining tariff money despite passing the underlying costs to buyers, according to the Verge.
Sony was sued in May by customers who alleged the PlayStation maker had collected a "double recovery windfall" by pocketing tariff refunds after raising console prices, the Verge reported. The two cases will test whether the Supreme Court's ruling ends up refunding businesses, consumers or both.
The replacement duties
After the February ruling, the White House introduced a 10 percent universal tariff as a temporary substitute. That measure expired late last month and was replaced by a new set of duties on 60 trading partners, keyed to administration findings that those countries have failed to police forced labor in their supply chains, the BBC reported. A few days earlier, Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on Canada.
Twenty-five Democratic-led states sued the administration Monday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing that the forced-labor rationale is a pretext to reinstate duties the Supreme Court struck down, the Journal reported this week. The $100 billion figure is likely to feature in that fight; both sides now have a first-line estimate of how much revenue the government has already conceded it collected under an unlawful authority.
Absent from today's reporting
The refund tally was carried by center-tier wire and business coverage. Administration officials had not publicly responded to the $100 billion figure by press time, and today's dispatches did not include reaction from the coalition of Democratic state attorneys general pursuing the replacement-tariff lawsuit or from congressional critics of either policy. Readers should treat this account as a partial picture until those voices weigh in.
The refund total is expected to keep climbing as Customs works through the pending queue and as importers supply the missing banking details on approved payouts. A schedule in the state coalition's Court of International Trade case has yet to be set.