Trump tariff refunds favor Amazon, Apple over $100 billion

Americans are bracing for higher prices after the Trump administration quietly refunded over $100 billion in tariffs—most of it going to big corporations rather than households that actually paid the costs.

The refunds came after the Supreme Court struck down $166 billion in tariffs earlier this year, but businesses that legally paid the duties when importing goods are now getting their money back. The problem? Those companies didn’t always bear the burden—U.S. firms and consumers did. A Federal Reserve study found nearly 90% of the economic hit from Trump’s 2025 tariffs landed on American businesses and shoppers, even though importers wrote the checks.

That’s why the refunds are flowing mostly to giants like Amazon, which paid $600 million, and Apple, which got back $2.2 billion. Amazon says it will refund customers in rare cases where tariffs were passed directly to them, while Walmart and Costco hint their refunds might help lower prices. But there’s no automatic mechanism to return the costs Americans already absorbed—and prices haven’t dropped just because some importers got refunds. Consumer prices in June were still 3.5% higher than a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bigger issue isn’t whether corporations share their refunds—it’s that shoppers already paid the price once and may not see it again. With no nationwide rebate system, households can’t rely on corporate goodwill to undo the damage. Instead, experts say the smarter move is focusing on parts of the budget that can still be controlled.