The long line for Trump tariff refunds is now open

U.S. Customs and Border Protection began accepting applications Monday for refunds on tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down in February, opening an online portal through which importers can submit claims on more than $166 billion in duties collected from about 330,000 businesses.

CBP, the agency running the system, set the portal's opening for 8 a.m. Approved claims will not result in payment for another 60 to 90 days, the agency said. Rather than paying out all claims simultaneously, refunds will be distributed in stages, with the most recent tariff payments prioritized.

CBP reported that by April 14, registration in its electronic payment system had been completed by roughly 56,497 importers, whose combined eligible refunds — interest included — came to $127 billion.

The process is not straightforward. Importers are required to file declarations that detail every product on which duties were paid, and any errors in data or formatting can cause a submission to be thrown out, according to The New York Times. The initial phase of the refund program covers only a subset of payments — specifically those involving tariffs that were estimated rather than finalized, or that fall within an 80-day window following a final accounting.

Meghann Supino, a partner at law firm Ice Miller, told The Associated Presss that if even one entry in a claim file fails to meet eligibility requirements, Customs may reject either the full filing or the individual line items in question. She advised businesses to expect technical problems as the portal handles high volumes of traffic. "Like any electronic online program that goes live with a lot of interest, I would expect that there might be some hiccups with the program on Monday," she said.

Among the businesses waiting on repayment are smaller importers for whom the sums involved are significant. Jackson's company, After Action Cigars of Rochester, Minnesota, took on $34,000 in tariff costs in the past year, choosing to eat the expense rather than pass it on to buyers. "My main concern is the turnaround time," Jackson told The AP. "A refund process that takes several months to complete doesn't solve the cash flow problem that it is supposed to fix."

The refund portal is the result of a Supreme Court ruling and subsequent court orders that the Trump administration resisted for weeks. The administration's reluctance to return the money — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called refunds "corporate welfare" and President Donald Trump characterized them as an "undeserved windfall" — drew legal challenges and political criticism. A federal judge ultimately ordered the White House to begin laying the groundwork for refunds, and a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade determined that companies subjected to the tariffs were entitled to them. The Supreme Court did not address refunds directly in its Feb. 20 ruling.

Money paid out through the portal flows to the importing businesses themselves, with no legal obligation to share it downstream. Separate litigation — class-action suits targeting companies across several industries — is working through the courts in an effort to change that. Delivery carriers such as FedEx $FDX occupy a different position in the refund chain because they billed tariffs straight to the end recipient rather than absorbing them as a business cost. FedEx has publicly committed to passing its recoveries back to those customers. The company said in a statement: "We are working with our customers as CBP begins processing refunds and plan to begin filing claims on April 20." The scale of corporate demand for repayment is reflected in the courts: according to The New York Times, over 3,000 companies — among them FedEx and Costco $COST — have taken legal action against the Trump administration to recover what they paid, with some suits predating the Supreme Court's February ruling.