The Trump administration has refunded approximately $100 billion in tariff revenue to importers, customs officials reported to the US Court of International Trade on August 5, 2026, according to the Financial Times. That figure represents 60% of the $165 billion total collected under Donald Trump's "liberation day" tariffs, which the US Supreme Court struck down in February 2026 (The Guardian).

Tariffs are taxes the government charges on goods brought into the country. Companies that import products pay these taxes at the border, and the cost often gets passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

The Supreme Court held that the President lacks authority to impose any tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the law the administration had used to put the tariffs in place. IEEPA was originally designed to let the president respond to national security emergencies, like freezing assets tied to foreign threats. The Court's ruling meant the government had to start returning the money to companies that had paid. Progress has been gradual: by July 14, 2026, $81 billion had been refunded. By June 2026, the administration was still resisting a court order requiring refund of the full $166 billion collected (New York Times).

More than 900 companies have sued the US over the tariff regime, with potential refunds that could total more than $160 billion (Financial Times). FedEx is among the companies suing for tariff refunds (Financial Times). America's small businesses, however, were left out of the administration's refund process (Financial Times).

The Court of International Trade, a federal court that handles trade disputes, has taken a broad view of who is allowed to bring a claim. In one ruling, the court said that a company does not need to have directly imported goods or paid Customs to argue it was harmed by a tariff (CIT). That open-door approach has allowed a wide range of businesses to seek refunds beyond just the direct importers.

The fiscal backdrop adds to the pressure. The US federal deficit, the gap between what the government spends and what it takes in, reached $1.37 trillion in the first nine months of the fiscal year, up 2% from the same period in 2025. The refund obligations, layered onto an already growing deficit, raise questions about how the Treasury will absorb the outflow even as the administration tries to replace the lost revenue.

In July 2026, Trump imposed a fresh round of tariffs on more than 80 countries to replace a 10% global duty that was due to expire. The new duties range between 10% and 12.5% and apply to countries including the UK, Mexico, Canada, Australia, India, China, and the EU's 27 member states. The administration based these tariffs on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a law historically used to respond to specific unfair trade practices by foreign countries. The administration says the new tariffs target countries it believes engage in forced labor (The Guardian).

A coalition of 25 US states sued the administration over the new tariffs, calling them a pretext for replacing the import taxes struck down by the Supreme Court. The states asked the court to halt the tariffs, declare them unlawful, and order refunds of duties already collected. Their complaint argues the tariffs on 59 countries and the EU cover 99.4% of US imports. New York Attorney General Letitia James said the administration, "after losing at the Supreme Court in February, was once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs" (The Guardian).

The broader context here is one of back-and-forth between the executive branch and the courts. The Supreme Court's February ruling did not just invalidate one set of tariffs. It removed the main legal tool the administration had used to impose broad tariffs without getting approval from Congress. The shift to Section 301 stretches that law to cover what is essentially a near-universal tariff, rather than the targeted trade actions it was designed for. The 25-state coalition's point that the new tariffs cover 99.4% of imports is meant to press exactly that argument: that the Section 301 invocation is a legal relabeling exercise, not a genuine response to forced labor.

The refund process also bears watching. The pace has accelerated, from $81 billion on July 14 to $100 billion on August 5. At that rate, the remaining $65 billion could be processed within months, assuming no further legal obstruction. Yet the administration's documented reluctance to comply with the full refund order, as recently as June, suggests the final stretch may be less smooth than the pace implies. The exclusion of small businesses from the refund mechanism creates a parallel track of potential claims and political pressure that the current figures do not capture.

For those watching trade policy, the key questions now center on how the Court of International Trade handles the 25-state challenge. If the court blocks the Section 301 tariffs, importers could face a situation where both the old tariff regime and the new one are tied up in court at the same time, with billions in duties collected under both systems subject to refund demands. The forced-labor justification for the new tariffs may also face scrutiny, given that they apply to many developed economies where forced labor is not the central trade dispute.