The federal government is processing an estimated $175 billion in tariff refunds this spring, and every dollar is flowing to the companies that paid duties at the border. Not a cent is going to the families who spent more on groceries, car seats, power tools, and electronics for years because of those same tariffs. Under the current system, it never will.
The refund mechanism runs through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment portal, known as ACE. Only registered importers, licensed customs brokers, and carriers can file claims. Individual consumers cannot. Most small retailers cannot. No federal program and no existing legal pathway offers ordinary buyers a direct route to recoup the higher prices they paid.
That design has drawn sharp criticism from Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, who released a statement in April 2026 demanding that corporations receiving refunds pass the savings along to the people who actually absorbed the costs. His office confirmed that nothing in the current system compels them to do so.
“The system was built to serve importers, and it does that efficiently,” said Clark Packard, research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. “What it was never designed to do is make consumers whole. That is a policy choice, not a technical limitation.”
How the portal works and who it shuts out
ACE has served for years as the federal government’s electronic gateway for trade declarations, entry filings, and duty payments. When tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were rolled back, CBP opened a claims window through ACE for importers seeking refunds on duties already paid. Agency guidance confirms that access requires an ACE account, a credential that excludes virtually all individual consumers and many small businesses without import licenses.
Other channels exist in the broader trade system, but none were built to reach consumers. Duty drawback claims let exporters recover duties on imported goods that are later re-exported. Administrative protests and court challenges allow importers to dispute tariff classifications. Each of these tools serves the companies that wrote the original checks to CBP, not the downstream buyers who covered those costs at the register.
The practical gap is easy to illustrate. A multinational retailer that paid tens of millions in tariff surcharges on Chinese-manufactured goods can log into ACE, file a claim, and receive a direct refund. The neighborhood hardware store that marked up imported wrenches and drill bits to cover those same costs has no equivalent path. Neither does the parent who paid $40 more for a car seat or the home cook who spent $15 extra on a set of kitchen pans over the past two years.
Where the $175 billion number comes from
The $175 billion figure appears in Horsford’s April 2026 press release, which describes that amount as tariff refunds “hanging in the balance.” It is a congressional estimate. Neither CBP nor the U.S. Treasury has independently published a matching total, and no Congressional Budget Office score has confirmed the figure as of May 2026.
For context, the Tax Foundation estimated that tariffs imposed under Section 301 and IEEPA authorities generated roughly $80 billion to $90 billion per year in customs revenue at their peak, a range that makes a cumulative refund pool in the hundreds of billions plausible over multiple years of collections but does not confirm the precise $175 billion figure. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has published similar annual revenue estimates. Readers should treat Horsford’s number as an approximation of the refund pool’s scale, not a verified disbursement tally.
What is well established is that American consumers bore the bulk of tariff costs while the duties were in effect. A 2019 study by economists Mary Amiti, Stephen Redding, and David Weinstein, published through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, found that U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods were almost entirely passed through to American buyers in the form of higher prices. Subsequent research by economists Pablo Fajgelbaum and Amit Khandelwal reached similar conclusions. If that pattern held for the tariffs now being refunded, the gap between who paid and who gets reimbursed is vast.
History offers little comfort for consumers
Previous tariff rollbacks suggest that refund dollars rarely trickle down. When the Trump administration granted tariff exclusions on certain Chinese goods between 2018 and 2020, importers received refunds on duties already paid, but academic research and trade press reporting found little evidence that those savings translated into lower shelf prices for consumers. Companies absorbed the refunds as margin recovery rather than passing them along.
“There is no historical precedent in U.S. trade policy for companies voluntarily returning tariff savings to end consumers at scale,” said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The incentive structure simply does not point in that direction. Companies view refunds as reimbursement for costs they bore, even when the economic evidence shows those costs were passed through.”
The pattern is consistent across trade cycles. After the U.S. lifted steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico in 2019, domestic prices for those metals declined gradually, but studies found the drop reflected shifting supply conditions more than any deliberate effort by importers to share savings. Consumers who had paid higher prices for appliances, vehicles, and construction materials during the tariff period received no rebates and no retroactive relief.
Questions CBP and Congress have not answered
CBP has not released data on how many refund claims have been filed, how much money has been disbursed, or whether payments are concentrated among a small number of large importers. Without those numbers, it is impossible to tell whether the program is functioning as a broad reimbursement effort or a windfall for a handful of major corporations. CBP did not respond to questions about the portal’s claims volume or processing timeline.
On Capitol Hill, the gap between rhetoric and action is wide. Horsford’s statement calls for corporate accountability, but his office has not introduced legislation requiring companies to share refund proceeds with consumers or supply-chain partners. The U.S. House has not scheduled hearings on the portal’s structure, and no Government Accountability Office review of the refund process has been announced. That leaves the congressman’s demand in the realm of political pressure, not binding policy.
Corporations receiving refunds face no legal obligation to lower prices, issue rebates, or disclose how they use the returned funds. While state consumer protection laws theoretically allow attorneys general to investigate price gouging, those statutes were not designed to address tariff refund pass-throughs, and no state has signaled an intent to use them that way. Class-action litigation on behalf of consumers remains a theoretical possibility, but no such suit has been filed as of May 2026.
Filing deadlines and processing timelines are also unclear. Neither CBP nor congressional committees have specified how long the claims window will remain open, leaving businesses uncertain about planning and consumers with no timeline for when lower prices might materialize, if they ever do.
A structural problem that outlasts this refund cycle
The disconnect between who pays tariff costs and who receives tariff refunds is not new. Trade policy has long treated tariffs as a transaction between governments and importers. Consumers appear nowhere in that equation, even when the economic evidence consistently shows they carry the cost. But the sheer size of this refund pool, potentially the largest tariff clawback in modern U.S. trade history, makes the gap harder to wave away.
Some companies may voluntarily reduce prices as their tariff expenses disappear. Others may pocket the refunds to shore up margins, pay down debt, or fund expansion. Without reporting requirements or transparency rules, those decisions will stay behind closed doors. As of May 2026, no major retailer or importer has publicly committed to passing refund savings to customers, and no industry trade group has proposed a voluntary framework for doing so.
For the millions of households that spent more on everyday goods during years of elevated tariffs, the situation is blunt: the federal government is returning billions to the businesses that wrote the checks at the border, while the people who covered those costs at checkout have no claim, no clear advocate, and no enforceable path to relief. The refund portal is working exactly as it was designed. That is the problem.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
