Government had been forced to pay back duties to companies that imported goods into the US that were hit by Trump’s tariffs
The US government has already paid back tens of billions of dollars in tariffs it collected before the supreme court ruled them illegal, according to budget figures released on Monday.
Tariffs – taxes on imported goods – have been a key part of president Donald Trump’s game economic plan since he took office again last year.
But in February, the supreme court shut down a big chunk of the extra tariffs Trump ordered, forcing the government to return money to the companies that had paid them.
According to the budget data, the US has paid out $81bn in tariff refunds so far this fiscal year, which started in October 2025, compared to just $5bn during the same stretch last year.
A Treasury department official told reporters that the spike is almost entirely because of the supreme court decision, with most of the refunds happening in May and June.
My employer increased all sales by 1% to pay for tariffs because Trump couldn’t make up his mind what was or wasn’t going to be taxed. Well they are still charging 1% on sales. If a project is 1,000,000 and 60% is subcontractor labor, 30% is material, and 10% is internal labor then 70% of the $1mil isn’t directly affected by tariffs and only a small portion of the material is affected by tariffs.
So that’s $10,000 in tariff charges for every $1,000,000 passed along to the customer but only $3,000 of the added cost was material and not all of that material qualified for tariffs. That’s in addition to the margin added to mark up and contingency.
The rest just goes to profit. Wonder why sales are down but profit is up? Maybe we are charging too much?