The Trump administration reported the refund of approximately 100 billion dollars collected as “liberation day tariffs” by President Donald Trump before their cancellation by the Supreme Court.
This amount, reported on Tuesday in a statement to the U.S. International Trade Court, constitutes about 60% of approximately 166 billion dollars that, according to government data, was obtained from extensive tariffs imposed by Trump in 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
These tariffs were canceled at the end of February after the Supreme Court ruled that the IEEPA did not grant the authority to impose them. Approximately two weeks later, federal judge Richard Eaton ordered the refund of tariffs collected under the IEEPA to importers.
Trump’s reaction and new attempts
Trump, who made tough tariffs a central element of his economic and foreign policy agenda, expressed his outrage at the court decisions. His administration recently took a series of steps to effectively restore the IEEPA tariff regime using other legal authorities.
“The tariffs were incredible. We got hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said on Tuesday in an interview with Fox News. “The Supreme Court dealt us a small blow, but we can do it another way.”
These new tariff methods are already facing lawsuits. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is paying refunds for the canceled IEEPA regime.
Progress of refunds and lawsuits
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP) introduced the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system at the end of April to track and pay tariff refunds.
As of July 31, the CAPE system had received 252,496 applications for tariff refunds, covering over 25 million import transactions, reported CBP spokesman Brandon Lord in a Tuesday report. This report is an update, required by the court, on the administration’s progress in paying refunds.
Nearly 129 billion dollars of “potential and certified refunds” have been accepted for processing through the CAPE system, Lord noted. Of this amount, approximately 100 billion dollars have already been completed, certified, and sent to the Treasury Department for payment, he added.
This report was submitted as part of a lawsuit by California importer Freestyle World, which seeks to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of small businesses. These businesses paid IEEPA tariffs and claim obstacles in obtaining refunds through the CAPE system. The government argues that the request for class-action certification came too late and is invalid.
In any case, the Trump administration’s refund process is far from complete: more than 330,000 importers paid IEEPA tariffs on over 53 million import transactions.
