U.S. importers, ranging from Target to Walmart, are due more than $160 billion in tariff refunds following a February Supreme Court decision as the Trump administration launches its claims filing portal Monday.
Hopes are high for a smooth launch of the system that will facilitate the refunds, but companies and Wall Street analysts are tempering their expectations that companies will get the money back quickly.
Trade lawyers are warning of bureaucratic hurdles, legal vulnerabilities, as well as the possibility of a last-minute appeal by the Trump administration.
“[Importers] are pessimistic that the government is going to make this easy. They’re anticipating that the government is going to make it as difficult as possible to get their money back,” said trade attorney Matthew Seligman, principal at Grayhawk Law.
“There’s frustration because the Supreme Court already ruled that these tariffs are unlawful,” he added.
Tariff refund claims portal opens Monday
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is set to roll out a tariff claims-filing portal – known as the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE – on Monday.
Importers can submit a declaration in the system for the tariffs they paid under Trump’s now-invalidated emergency tariff authority and then expect to receive “one consolidated refund amount,” according to the CBP. Refund claims have to undergo multiple validations, program documents show.
“The idea is that all of the importers that were impacted and paid the tariffs should use this system whether they’re Walmart or a local mom-and-pop store down the street … The way they described it makes it sound a lot more expedient than we were anticipating,” said Stefan Reisinger, a partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.
“There’s a fair degree of pessimism in the importing community about whether this is really going to work the way it’s described,” he said.
Retailers due big refunds
Analysts on Wall Street are projecting huge refunds for blue-chip retailers.
According to an April 10 analysis by Citi, Walmart is due $10.2 billion, Target is due $2.2 billion and Nike could get $1 billion back. Refunds are also expected for Kohl’s at $550 million, Gap at $400 million, and Macy’s at $320 million, the firm found.
Retailers could be in line for big tariff refunds
Source: Citi
The refunds likely won’t be built into much forward guidance from equity research teams, but could in principle provide some one-time boosts to balance sheets in coming quarters or be used for equity buybacks and debt payments.
“When asked what might be done with refund proceeds, most management teams said something like this: … ‘If refunds are received, we will consider all options in terms of what to do with the cash. We will consider needs of the business, share repurchases, debt paydown, or increasing our cash cushion on the balance sheet,'” the Citi equity researchers wrote in their note.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey said he didn’t think the refund process would happen fast.
“It would seem to be very complex and, by extension, probably not something that’s going to happen very quickly. We’ll certainly avail ourselves of the opportunity that we have to get a refund, but when that happens, remains to be seen,” he said at the JPMorgan Retail Round Up on April 8.
If the refunds arrive as expected, they could be reflected in company financials.
“It would be recognized in earnings from an accounting perspective. So that is a [profit and loss] P&L benefit if and when we should get that refund,” Rainey said.
However, the refunds could present a legal vulnerability for the companies claiming them, trade lawyers said. That’s because many companies passed through their cost increases, raising the overall level of consumer prices.
One January analysis from Harvard Business School’s Pricing Lab found that retail tariff pass-through contributed “about 0.76 percentage points to the all-items Consumer Price Index by October 2025.”
“If [companies] get refunds, what are the chances that [they’re] going to get sued either by [their] direct or indirect customers?” Reisinger said.
Are additional tariffs on the way?
Administration officials sound pugilistic about restoring tariff levels through other legal channels besides the emergency authority. Under consideration are Section 301 tariffs, which are used to target “discriminatory” or “unfair” trade practices by U.S. trading partners.
“We had a setback at the Supreme Court in terms of the tariff policy but we will be implementing or conducting Section 301 studies, so the tariffs could be back in place at the previous level by beginning of July,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week at a Wall Street Journal event, as reported by Bloomberg.
Importers say they’re concerned about any forthcoming Section 301 tariffs.
“We’re really worried about that,” Eugene Laney, president of American Association of Exporters and Importers, told CNBC on Thursday. “But even if they moved forward on that, I don’t believe that it would reach the level of the [International Emergency Economic Powers Act] IEEPA tariffs.”
The White House, Treasury Department, and U.S. Trade Representative did not respond to questions from CNBC about further use of Section 301 tariffs.
