Published
August 12, 2026
Updated
August 12, 2026
The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February, and the government has now paid $100 billion of that money back — all of it to importers. Second-quarter earnings reports show what happened to it next, and for most companies the answer is a better profit margin rather than a lower price.
What Happened
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had paid roughly $100 billion in IEEPA tariff refunds as of July 31, 2026, according to a court-ordered progress filing submitted to the U.S. Court of International Trade by CBP official Brandon Lord and reported in early August. The filing put the total accepted through CBP's dedicated refund portal at about $128.68 billion, across 252,496 refund declarations covering more than 25 million import entries.That is a genuine milestone. It is also roughly 60% of the approximately $166 billion the government collected under the tariffs the Supreme Court invalidated on February 20, 2026 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the 6-3 decision holding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Two weeks after that ruling, the Court of International Trade ordered the duties refunded to importers.
The more interesting development is not the total. It is that second-quarter earnings season has now given us the first clear look at what companies are actually doing with the money.
Refunds Paid
~$100B as of July 31, 2026
Out of ~$128.68B accepted through CBP's refund portal · ~60% of the ~$166B collected under IEEPA
Who Gets It
The importer of record — not the customer
252,496 refund declarations covering 25M+ import entries · no government path for retail shoppers
Where It's Showing Up
Profit margins, not shelf prices
Apple booked ~$2.2B · Fortune Brands $81M · Philips €186M · Stanley Black & Decker ~$118M
Can Consumers Claim?
No — nothing to file
No government refund for shoppers; consumer lawsuits are all at the complaint stage
The Money Is Landing in Earnings Reports
When we wrote in July that $71 billion had gone to companies rather than shoppers, the question of what they would do with it was still open. Earnings season answered it.| Company | Reported Tariff Refund Benefit | How It Was Described |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | ~$2.2 billion | ~2 points of gross margin, ~$0.11 per share; more expected next quarter |
| Amazon | ~$600 million | Said it will automatically refund customers where the import charge is traceable |
| Stanley Black & Decker | ~$118 million (Phase 1) | Pre-tax gain, ~$0.17 per share net benefit; full-year guidance raised |
| Fortune Brands | $81 million net | Operating margin rose to 20.4% on a 4.1% sales decline |
| Philips | €186 million | Cited in stronger profitability and cash flow |
| Weyco Group | $15.3 million | Recovery of previously paid tariffs improved gross margin and operating earnings |
Figures as reported by each company in its own results. Amounts and periods are not directly comparable — companies are on different fiscal calendars and have recovered different shares of what they paid.
The pattern across the disclosures is consistent. The refunds are being reported as margin recovery, earnings benefits and guidance raises. With one exception, none of these companies announced a consumer price reduction tied to the refund.
Apple's Number Is the Clearest Illustration
Apple's disclosure is worth isolating because the size of the refund relative to the headline result makes the dynamic unusually visible.The company reported a tariff refund of roughly $2.2 billion in its June quarter, contributing about 2 percentage points to a gross margin of 50.1% and about $0.11 to diluted earnings per share. Strip the refund out and that margin lands closer to 48% — approximately where analysts had it. Apple has indicated it expects roughly another point of gross margin benefit in the September quarter as remaining refunds arrive.
On the earnings call, chief executive Tim Cook said the refund money would go toward the company's U.S. manufacturing investment rather than price cuts. That is a legitimate use of the company's own money, and Apple is under no legal obligation to do anything else with it. It is simply a clear statement of where the money is going, from the largest single recipient to disclose a figure.
Amazon Is Still the Exception
One company has broken from the pattern. Amazon said it received about $600 million and that it would automatically refund customers where it can trace an import charge to a specific order — no claim form, no action required by the shopper.What makes that possible is a data problem the rest of retail mostly does not have solved. Amazon collected tariff-related charges in a way that can be tied back to individual orders, so it can compute who paid what. A company that folded tariff costs into a shelf price has no equivalent record — there is no line item to reverse, and no way to identify which customer absorbed how much. That difference, more than any difference in intent, is why the Amazon approach has not spread.
Why Prices Are Not Falling Back
The straightforward answer is that nothing requires them to. A price increase is not a debt; a company that raised prices in response to a cost is free to keep them there when the cost disappears.Economists broadly expected this. Goldman Sachs economists have written that companies are unlikely to reverse tariff-related price increases nearly as quickly as they applied them — the familiar asymmetry in which costs pass through to consumers rapidly on the way up and slowly, if at all, on the way down.
There is also a timing mismatch that gets less attention. Companies raised prices in 2025 against tariff costs they were paying then. The refunds arrived in 2026, in a different fiscal year, often at a different business unit, and frequently after the inventory purchased with those duties had already been sold. Even a company inclined to pass the money back would struggle to identify who to pass it back to.
Not All of It Is Refundable, and Not All of It Has Landed
Two caveats matter for reading any of these numbers.First, the Supreme Court invalidated tariffs imposed under IEEPA and only those. Section 232 duties on steel and aluminum rest on separate statutory authority under the Trade Expansion Act, and Section 301 duties on Chinese goods rest on a third. Neither was struck down, and neither generates a refund. So a company's headline tariff-exposure figure is never the refundable amount — for steel-intensive manufacturers especially, the refundable slice is considerably narrower than the total tariff bill.
Second, the process is not finished. About $28 billion of what CBP has accepted through the portal had not yet been paid out as of the filing, and roughly $37 billion of the $166 billion total had not been submitted through the portal at all. CBP has been rolling the system out in phases, and further tranches — including finally liquidated entries, a category trade press has put at several billion dollars — were still pending as of early August. More refunds are coming, which means more of these earnings disclosures are coming too.
Where This Leaves Consumers
Nowhere good, in terms of a direct remedy. There is no government process through which a retail shopper can claim any part of this money. The refund runs to whoever paid the duty at the border, and that is not you.That gap is what a growing group of consumer class actions is built around. They argue that a company which recovered a tariff from customers through higher prices, and then recovered it a second time from the government, should not be permitted to keep both — and they are asking courts to order the money passed through. The theory is new, it depends entirely on the February ruling, and no court has yet decided whether it works.
Important: none of those cases is claimable. Every one is at the complaint stage — no class certified, no settlement, no fund, no claim form, no deadline. We track all of them, with each defendant, court and the counts pleaded, on our tariff refund class action tracker. If you want to know whether the company you bought from is being sued, that is the page to check.
The refund gap has also begun drawing political attention, with trade press reporting calls from at least one state lawmaker for consumers to be paid back directly. Nothing has been enacted, and no proposal currently creates a consumer refund path.
If You Imported Directly, This Is Different
One group of readers does have a real path. If you are a business that imported goods yourself, you may be the importer of record — which makes you the party entitled to the refund, not a bystander to it. CBP's process is open, it covers small importers as well as large ones, and refunds carry interest.We have a separate walkthrough of how a small business applies for an IEEPA tariff refund, including what records you need and how the portal phases work.
For everyone else: be careful. A $100 billion refund story with no consumer claim process attached is exactly the environment in which fake "tariff refund" texts and emails circulate. There is no consumer claim form. Anyone asking you to pay a fee or hand over bank details to collect a tariff refund is running a scam.
What Happens Next
Three things are worth watching over the next few months.The remaining refund tranches will keep moving, which means the earnings disclosures will keep coming — the September-quarter reports should capture a further wave, including the additional benefit Apple has already flagged.
The first substantive court rulings in the consumer cases are due. Defendants have been filing motions to dismiss, and those rulings will be the first real signal of whether a shopper has any legal claim on an importer's refund at all.
And the political track is live but early. Refund totals of this size, paired with the absence of any consumer mechanism, are the kind of thing that attracts legislative proposals. None has been enacted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the $100 billion the final total?
No. It is what CBP had paid as of July 31, 2026, out of about $128.68 billion accepted through its portal and roughly $166 billion collected overall. Refunds are still being processed in phases, so the figure will keep rising.My prices went up in 2025. Am I owed anything?
Not by the government — there is no consumer refund mechanism. Whether you are owed anything by the retailer is precisely the question the pending class actions raise, and no court has answered it. Nothing is claimable today.Are companies legally required to pass the refund on?
No court has held that they are. The lawsuits argue that equity requires it where the company recovered the cost from customers first, but that is an unproven position, and the companies dispute it.Does this affect the steel and aluminum tariffs?
No. Section 232 steel and aluminum duties and Section 301 duties on Chinese goods rest on separate legal authority, were not invalidated, and are not being refunded.Sources
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection progress filing to the U.S. Court of International Trade (as of July 31, 2026), as reported by CNBC and Supply Chain Dive.• Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (U.S. Feb. 20, 2026).
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, IEEPA Duty Refunds.
• Apple Inc., quarterly results (Form 8-K exhibit), and reporting on the accompanying earnings call.
• Company results and earnings materials from Stanley Black & Decker, Fortune Brands, Royal Philips and Weyco Group.
• Cato Institute, "IEEPA Refunds Update: Good Progress, but Still a Ways to Go".
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