The Trump administration has refunded about $100bn from tariffs it collected before the US supreme court ruled a chunk of them illegal, a sum that equals about 60% of the $165bn raised from Donald Trump’s Liberation Day Tariffs. Customs officials reported the figure to the US court of international trade on Tuesday, putting a hard number on a reversal that has now reached the scale of a major revenue stream.
That is why the tariffs are back in focus now. In February, the US supreme court struck down part of the extra levies Trump had imposed, forcing the government to return money to the companies that paid them. Then last month, Trump imposed a fresh round of tariffs on more than 80 countries, with rates ranging from 10% to 12.5% and covering countries including the UK, Mexico, Canada, Australia, India, China and the European Union’s 27 member states.
The refunds do not appear to have been spread evenly or by a public formula. The government has only said the money has gone back to the companies that paid the duties, leaving the exact split unresolved. What is clear is the scale: a levy programme sold as an economic fix has already been partially unwound by the courts, even as the federal budget picture has worsened and the deficit reached $1.37tn in the first nine months of the fiscal year after the refund process began.
Letitia James sharpened the political fight this week, saying the Trump administration was “once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs.” A coalition of 25 US states sued the Trump administration over the levies and asked the US court of international trade to stop them, declare them unlawful and order refunds of duties already paid. The states argue the tariffs on 59 countries and the European Union cover 99.4% of US imports, a reach that leaves little of the trade system untouched.
Officials in the Trump administration say the countries have not done enough to crack down on products made by forced labour, keeping the legal and political dispute alive even after the refund milestone. But the immediate question now is whether the court will block the new tariffs as well, which would push the administration deeper into the same cycle of collecting duties, losing in court and sending the money back out.
