Americans are owed billions in refunds of Trump’s illegal tariffs.Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Daily Prospect Monday through Friday. [link removed]

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**APRIL 21, 2026**

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The Supreme Court overturned Trump’s “emergency” tariffs and a federal judge ordered the government to create a system for people to collect refunds. But I found [link removed] that the system is a nightmare to navigate, whether through incompetence or sabotage. Trump epitomizes the “deep state” that MAGA hates.

**–Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor**

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Samuel Rigelhaupt/Sipa USA via AP Images

The Tariff Refund Nightmare [link removed]

**In principle, Americans are owed $166 billion in refunds of Trump’s illegal tariffs. But actually collecting is like unscrambling an egg.**

When the Supreme Court overturned President Trump’s “emergency” tariffs [link removed] on more than 100 countries in February as an abuse of a president’s authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), importers, producers, and consumers stood to gain refunds of some $166 billion in illegal tariffs that they paid. In March, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade [link removed] required the federal government to set up a process to repay tariffs improperly collected under the statute.

The Trump administration agreed to abide by the court ruling and announced plans for a system for people to collect. On Monday, Customs and Border Protection unveiled that system and the government’s refund portal [link removed].

The refund system would make Kafka blush.

The issue of who actually paid the tariff and who should get the refund is inherently complicated. According to Customs and Border Protection’s own count [link removed], some 330,000 different importers paid IEEPA duties on more than 53 million individual shipments until the tariffs were declared unconstitutional. The government has estimated that it will take up to 4.43 million hours [link removed] to process all the refund requests.

In some cases, importers passed along all or part of the cost to consumers. Should consumers apply for refunds, or should importers pass along some of the refund to thousands of consumers? The portal provides no useful guidance on that question. Remember, this is the same administration that wrecked basic government capacity under DOGE.

Meanwhile, our friends over at Talking Points Memo report a systematic disadvantage for small businesses [link removed]. Unlike giant corporations, small businesses don’t have trade compliance departments or supply chain managers. Yet they face exactly the same challenges in trying to figure out how much they paid in illegal tariffs and what they owe consumers. According to Talking Points Memo, a disproportionate share of refunds will go to big businesses that have the capacity to determine what they are owed and apply for it.

This is an administration that claims to be pro-business, hostile to government bureaucracy, and partial to America first. What’s clear is that many consumers, importers, and producers will never collect the refunds that they are owed. What’s even clearer is that Trump never should have imposed the illegal tariffs in the first place.

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