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The lucky few who can apply for tariff refunds
The Trump administration launched its tariff refund portal. Will the refunds really happen?
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is letting businesses apply for tariff refunds — but consumers who ate those costs via higher prices are out of luck.
What happened? Because the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs back in February, the administration is legally obligated to give back more than $166 billion of revenue those tariffs brought in.
On Monday, they kicked that off by launching their tariff refund portal. They’ve given the refund process the handy acronym of CAPE. That’s short for “Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries.” Not all heroes wear capes, but the tariff refunders do.
Who gets refunds — and who doesn’t? Basically, only those who paid tariffs directly to the US government can apply for refunds.
That probably means not you personally. If you bought an imported product, or a product with imported components, you may have eaten the cost of Trump’s tariffs through higher prices or fees. But if you weren’t paying the government directly, no refund for you. Sorry!
What’s the big picture? Though the Supreme Court didn’t address how the refund process should work, a lower court ordered the process to move forward — and, for now, the administration is playing ball.
Will it last? Trump seemed inclined to try and avoid giving back his precious tariff money by any means necessary. He could still slow-walk actually returning the money, or file another legal appeal. But the first step in the refund process went ahead as planned, and without drama.
More broadly, Trump hasn’t given up on tariffs. The Court only struck down some of them; others remain in place, and he’s hoping to institute more under different legal authorities. The current tariff rate remains about 5 times higher than it was before he took office, per the Budget Lab at Yale.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
This week will bring the peak of the Lyrid Meteor Shower, in which as many as 20 shooting stars per hour can be seen at night — if the weather cooperates, of course. Check out space.com for more.
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