Who gets the $166bn tariff refund?

With the IEEPA tariffs struck down, boardrooms have started fighting over $166 billion in refunds. More than 53 million individual customs entries paid the emergency duties over the past eighteen months, and the scramble for the money has begun among companies and in the customs bureaucracy.

Importers of record get the cheque

Under federal customs law, a duty refund can go only to the 'importer of record' named on the customs entry. That puts large multinationals such as Walmart, Nike, Apple and General Motors in line for tens of billions of dollars between them. The cash falls outside operating profit and is likely to go straight into share buybacks and special dividends.

The rule is administrative before it is moral. The importer of record is the party that files the entry, posts the customs bond and pays the duty, so it is the only party the government has a direct relationship with. Customs has no record of who bought the goods afterwards or at what price, and it has no mechanism for following a duty down a supply chain. A refund therefore returns to the account it came from, whatever happened to the cost in between.

Not every tariff is refundable

The size of each company's windfall depends on which duties it paid. Only the tariffs imposed under emergency powers were struck down. Duties on steel, aluminium, cars and car parts rest on the separate national-security authority in Section 232, and those remain lawful, so a carmaker whose tariff bill came mostly from imported vehicles and components will recover far less than its headline tariff costs suggest. Retailers and apparel brands, whose imports were hit mainly by the reciprocal and country-specific emergency duties, stand to recover a larger share.

Where the money goes

Most companies expensed their tariff payments as part of the cost of goods sold, so a refund will reverse costs already booked and flow through as a one-off gain, typically once management judges repayment probable. Investors will need to strip it out to see underlying margins. Firms that raised prices to cover the tariffs will enjoy the refund without giving back the price rise, which is why boards see buybacks as the natural home for the cash rather than price cuts.

The scale of the paperwork is easier to grasp per entry. Spread across 53 million entries, billion works out to an average of a little over ,000 each, but the distribution is highly skewed: a single container of electronics can carry a duty bill many times that, while a small parcel shipment may be worth a few dollars. Customs will have to process the small claims with the same care as the large ones, which is one reason the process is likely to be slow.

Timing also favours the largest companies. They have in-house customs teams and outside counsel who filed protective claims and tracked the liquidation status of their entries throughout the litigation, so their paperwork is ready. A small importer that has not kept track of which entries remain open may find that deadlines have already passed on part of its claim.

Everyone else goes to court

Wholesale buyers, component makers and shoppers who paid 'tariff surcharges' itemised on their invoices are already filing class-action suits for a share of the pool.

Their legal path is steep. American courts have long been wary of claims that depend on tracing how much of a cost was passed down a chain. In antitrust law, the Supreme Court's decisions in Hanover Shoe in 1968 and Illinois Brick in 1977 barred defendants from arguing that overcharges were passed on and, in turn, barred indirect buyers from suing for them under federal law, largely because tracing pass-through was judged too complex. Those rulings do not govern customs refunds, but they show the problem plaintiffs face in proving how much of each duty landed on them.

An itemised surcharge helps. A buyer who can show an invoice line labelled as a tariff charge has a stronger claim that the seller collected money for a specific purpose that no longer applies, which suits arguments based on contract terms or unjust enrichment. A buyer who simply paid a higher list price has almost nothing to point to, and consumers who bought goods at retail will struggle most of all.

Interest adds a further layer. Federal law requires that overpaid duties be returned with interest, so the government's bill grows with every month of delay, and the importer's gain grows with it. For a company that paid heavy duties early in 2025, the interest component alone may be material, and it will be reported separately from the refund of principal. That gives importers a financial reason not to settle for less than the full amount, and it gives the Treasury a reason to process the largest claims first.

Winners and losers from the scramble

The clear winners are large importers of record with good records, their shareholders, and the customs brokers, lawyers and claims buyers who service the process. Litigation funders backing the downstream class actions are taking a leveraged bet on novel legal theories. The losers are small businesses that paid surcharges to their suppliers, and shoppers, who bore a large share of the cost and are least likely to see any of it back. The Treasury loses the money and pays statutory interest on top.

Why the fight could narrow

The case against a long legal war is that many disputes will settle commercially. A retailer that wants to keep a supplier, or a manufacturer that wants to keep a big customer, may share part of its refund through price credits rather than risk the relationship, and some contracts already contain clauses that allocate changes in duties between buyer and seller. That kind of private redistribution will not show up in any court record, but it could move a meaningful sum.

The signals to watch are the Court of International Trade's orders on how refunds will be administered, guidance from Customs on processing claims for liquidated and unliquidated entries, disclosures in company filings about expected recoveries, and whether judges certify any of the downstream class actions. The $166 billion refund will mostly land with big importers, at least at first. Downstream buyers will spend years in court trying to claw some of it back, and most will probably recover far less than they paid.