Tangle - What's next for tariff refunds?

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Over the past week, the Trump administration has begun providing initial updates on its plan to reimburse $166 billion in tariffs collected over the past year that the Supreme Court invalidated in February. Approximately 330,000 importers are expected to be eligible for refunds, which must be paid with interest. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Join us on Reddit!Over the past year, our community on Reddit has been growing — as have the discussions about our coverage. In the past month, threads titled “Under-discussed Topics around Iran War,” “The State of the Union was bad, but not for why Tangle thinks,” and “Justice for Isaac’s lost right socks” have garnered a lot of participation. If you want to start a discussion on a specific issue, a broad theme with our coverage or anything to do with the Tangle podcast, join our Reddit community at r/TangleNews!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you think tariff refunds will be disbursed? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Audrey Moorehead and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Morning, good afternoon and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead, and I'll be your host for today as we talk about the refunds on Trump's tariffs. But before we get into the main topic, I wanted to tell you a little bit about a fun community that we are building on Reddit. Over the past year, our Reddit community has been growing, as have discussions about our coverage. In the past month, we've had threads titled Under-Discust topics around the Iran War. The state of the union was bad, but not for why Tangle thinks, and, of course, justice for Isaac's lost right socks. These have garnered a lot of participation, a lot of good discussion, and some good fun among the community.

And if you want to start a discussion yourself on a specific issue, a broad theme, in Tangle's coverage or anything to do with the Tangle podcast and suspension of the rules, you can join our Reddit community at R slash Tangle News, and the link to that will be in the show notes below. You'll also see me there because I'm in there moderating quite a bit of the time, and I think we have a lot of fun, so I hope to see you there. In the meantime, I'm going to pass it over to John, who's going to take you through today's topic, and then I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Audrey, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump said some countries have rejected his request to join a coalition to escort oil tankers

through the Strait of Hermuz. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan are among the countries that have said they will not participate. Separately, the Israeli military said it has begun a limited ground operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah. Number two, a federal judge temporarily blocked several vaccine policy decisions made by the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The judge found that the department's changes to childhood vaccine recommendations were likely carried out improperly, and that Kennedy appointed new members to a vaccine advisory panel without observing proper federal procedures. Number three, Cuba reported a nationwide blackout after its energy grid collapsed on Monday,

the third such incident in the past four months. The government said the Trump administration's energy blockade has imperiled its grid. Number four, President Trump announced that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been diagnosed with breast cancer. saying the disease is in the early stage and her prognosis is excellent. Wiles will continue in her role while she receives treatment. And number five, thousands of union workers at the world's largest meatpacking company went on strike in Colorado. The union claims the company committed unfair labor practices and offered insufficient pay increases.

The Supreme Court says that President Trump's broad tariffs are illegal. So number one, does that mean we, you and I, the average consumer, gets a refund. and what exactly does that mean for prices? Over the past week, the Trump administration has begun providing initial updates on its plan to reimburse $166 billion in tariffs collected over the past year that the Supreme Court invalidated in February. Approximately 330,000 importers are expected to be eligible for refunds, which must be paid with interest.

For context, on February 20th, the Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 to strike down President Trump's Liberation Day tariff. and other duties issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The ruling did not address whether the U.S. government must pay back tariff revenue it has collected. On March 4th, Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that companies are entitled to repayment on the IEPA tariffs and instructed customs and border protection to immediately begin processing refunds. Following the Supreme Court's ruling,

thousands of U.S. businesses filed lawsuits seeking reimbursement, but the Trump administration warned that the request could take over 4.4 million hours to manually process. On March 6th, CBP told the judge that it could not immediately comply with his order, and Eaton temporarily suspended it to give them time to prepare a refund system. On Thursday, Brandon Lord, executive director of CBP's trade policy and programs department, said the agency will begin testing new software designed to process refund requests in bulk in the upcoming weeks. Eaton called this update satisfactory progress,

but said the administration must provide another update this week. In addition to the lawsuits filed by businesses, consumers have filed class action suits asking companies that receive refunds to pass those returns onto customers who paid elevated prices while the tariffs were in place. On Wednesday, one such lawsuit was filed against Costco in federal court. This court seeks to prevent Costco, the third largest retailer in the world from double recovery, it read. Costco has made no commitment to return any portion of anticipated tax. tariff refunds to the consumers who bore those costs. On March 5th, the company said it will disperse any refunds it receives through lower prices for its members, adding that it did not pass

on the full cost of the tariffs to its customers. Other companies, such as FedEx, said they will issue direct tariff refunds to customers if they are reimbursed. Today, we'll break down the latest on the refunds with views from the left and the right, and then Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead will give her take. We'll be right back after this question. We'll be right back after this break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is said. Many on the left blame conservatives on the court for creating a chaotic reimbursement process. Some argue consumers should receive refunds too. Others say businesses are unlikely to pass on refunds to their customers. In balls and strikes, Steve Kennedy argued the Supreme Court's conservatives

created the tariff refunds mess. The resolution of the legal challenge to President Donald Trump's IEPA tariffs should have been straightforward. After the executive branch imposes sweeping tariffs without lawful authority, someone sues, and the courts, in light of the enormous political and economic stakes, temporarily prevent the tariffs from taking effect as litigation slogs on. Eventually, the Supreme Court issues a final ruling on the merits and finds that Trump lacks the power to institute the tariffs, Kennedy said. But thanks to the court's earlier decision in Trump v. Kasa, which effectively prohibited universal injunctions, federal judges did not enjoin the tariffs. Instead, importers had to pay the tariffs for nine months to the two

of $130 billion. Just as Brett Kavanaugh lamented that the refund process is likely to be a mess. He is right, but the time to prevent this mess was at the injunction phase, Kennedy said. For years, when lower courts blocked sweeping federal policies using injunctive relief,

conservatives would complain of overreach so long as a Republican was president. Now, when the absence of that relief allows the implementation of unlawful policies, they pivot to the reliance interest those policies create. The longer and more harshly the government acts, the more disruptive it would become to stop it, encouraging increasing lawlessness.

In MS Now, Ray Brescia said, Americans deserve relief from the costs of Trump's illegal tariffs. Congress can help. Trump is treating this $175 billion like a bad debt on one of his failed real estate ventures. You can take him to court, but he'll fight having to pay a penny, tooth and nail. What makes this fight different, however, is now he has the full weight and power of the Justice department behind him, doing his bidding at public expense, Brescia wrote. But the administration shouldn't have the last word on the subject, and Congress shouldn't sit idly by while the administration treats this money like its own, forcing businesses and taxpayers

to go through the trouble and the expense of having to claw back what is rightfully theirs. Instead of relying on the administration to reimburse Americans fairly and expeditiously, Congress can create an independent fund capitalized by the billions taken in as illegal tariffs, Brescia said. Congress does this sort of thing with some frequency, as in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for those exposed to the toxic chemicals at the Camblijun military base and those harmed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster through the Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund. While such interventions typically follow a national disaster, here, the disaster for the economy was the president's illegal tariffs. In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik wrote,

Waiting for your tariff refund check? Forget about it. Asked about the prospects that Americans would be receiving refunds of the illegal tariffs paid since Trump imposed them in April, Treasury Secretary Bacent replied with a condescending smirk. I get a feeling the American people won't see it, Hiltzegro. By not specifying a refund process, the Supreme Court decision left a vacuum that Bacent tried to fill. In his comments, he explained why refunds will be nothing but a dream for the average American, and those comments were chilling. The government is poised to challenge importers' applications for reimbursement,

generating litigation that can be dragged up for weeks, months, years. What consumers don't know is how much of the tariffs have been passed down to them. Some sellers decided to eat some or all of the tariffs to keep consumer prices steady. Some may have stocked up on tariff-eligible products ahead of the formal imposition of the levees, Hiltzikrout. Will retailers seek out customers who paid higher prices on products that were tariff to hand them refunds? None has said that such an eventuality is in the cards, though it might not be surprising to see some businesses use the end of tariffs

as a marketing device. All right, that is up for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right supports a timely refund process, and many contend the government has the power to send the refund checks quickly if it wants to. Some say the scope of the reimbursements should be limited to importers. Others worry about the high cost to taxpayers if payments are delayed. The Washington Post editorial board argued, the stolen money needs to be returned. Just as Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in his dissent that refunding tariffs would be messed

That's true. Returning an estimated $175 billion by some estimates to thousands of businesses will be tricky. But that's a flimsy rationalization for defending an abuse of power by the executive branch, the board wrote. The government already said it would. Last year, when this case was being argued in lower courts, attorneys for the Trump administration warned that they would need to refund the money if the tariffs got struck down. The government already has refund procedures for wrongly collected tariffs. Mistakes happen for legal tariffs all the time. and getting the money back is an administrative process that doesn't require lawsuits, the board said. The IRS refunded $461.62 billion to $117.6 million individual income taxpayers in fiscal year 2024.

By comparison, customs and border protections task is small. If CBP needs to hire some contractors for a few months to handle the one-time surge in refunds, that's a small price to pay. In the Chicago Tribune, Sarah Albrecht said, refund the tariffs, right way, not with political math. Some businesses absorb the tariffs, at least initially, cutting into margins to avoid sudden price hikes. Others passed along some or all of the cost. Some raised prices beyond the tariff itself because working capital costs rose. Tariffs must be paid before goods are sold, tightening cash flow and often requiring short-term borrowing,

Albrecht said. There is no single pass-through rate. One retailer might have absorbed most of the cost to preserve customer loyalty. Another may have increased prices and still lost sales volume. Tariff refunds should follow the legal payment trail. They should be returned to the importer of record, whether that is a small business directly or a customs broker or a carrier clearing goods on its behalf. Those intermediaries can then reconcile accounts with their customers under the contracts that governed those transactions, Albrecht said. Some may choose to pass refunds directly to customers. Others may offer promotions, sales, or price rollbacks. Some may reinvest in hiring or restored delayed raises. Others may do nothing at all because their overall costs, including financing,

fees, and lost volume, exceeded what they were ever able to pass along. In Cato, Scott Linzacombe, Alfredo Carrillo-Obrugan, and Chad Smitzun wrote, the government can't refund Trump's illegal tariffs as easily as it collected them. Unfortunately, the company's fight may just be getting started. If so, the drawn-out process will likely deny many American firms the money that the government owes them and will likely cost taxpayers billions of additional dollars in interest, the authors said. Customs and Border Protection said that it can't stop charging IEPA tariffs on imports for which duty liability has not yet been finalized, i.e. liquidated. In other words, importers of the 20.1 million entries that remain unliquidated as of March 4th

may still be charged IEPA tariffs. The implementation challenges that CBP says it now faces are predictable technical and logistical issues that the agency should have considered months ago, especially since the government lost the IEPA tariff case in every court that heard it, the authors wrote. The agency's predicament is a problem of the government's own making, and we seriously doubt that American importers or taxpayers would be granted the leniency that the agency is now requesting from the court. All right, let's head over to Audrey for her take.

All right. John? Let's just get right into my take. The Supreme Court did not indicate what should be done with improperly collected revenue, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his dissent from the court's February decision invalidating the majority of President Trump's tariffs. I disagreed with a lot of Kavanaugh's historical arguments about presidential authority, but he was right about one thing. The Supreme Court has created a giant mess. As soon as the learning resources decision came down, thousands of lawsuits from importers followed, as well as some consumer class action suits. Nearly all of these suits are being funneled through the Court of International Trade, or CIT,

which assigned one of its members, Judge Richard Eaton, as the sole arbiter of these tariff cases. Since the Supreme Court didn't indicate a framework through which the government should seek to provide relief, it was entirely possible that each importer would need to fight for a refund individually. But then, in one sweeping order in a nondescript tariff case, Notable only because it asked for emergency relief, Judge Eaton ordered the federal government to issue refunds to nearly all importers who were impacted by Trump's sweeping tariffs.

During the hearing for that case, Judge Eaton told the federal government, quote, I believe there will be no chaos associated with the provision of these refunds and that it will not result in a mess, end quote. I don't know why Eaton was so optimistic. A lot of the pundits, whose arguments John read earlier,

are tacitly optimistic too, focusing their discussion on whether consumers will receive refunds. But at this rate, some of the companies who pay duties to the government might be lucky to get refunds at all. President Trump himself seems set on dragging out the process, saying the administration will be in court for the next five years fighting the refunds. His stance indicates what the federal government's response to mandated refunds will be, delay and argue.

At a first glance, the federal government response looks like compliance. Following Judge Eaton's March 4th order, Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, released a four-step plan for processing refunds called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries System, or CAPE system, which CBP says will be operational within 45 days. But when you look more closely, you can see the government's obstinence clear as day. For one, the CAPE system seems designed to place more burdens on the importers filing for refunds than on the government, meaning it will likely keep some importers from getting the refunds they're entitled to.

Furthermore, the federal government has until May 6th to challenge Eaton's order in federal court, and I fully expected to do so. In fact, depending on the legal basis for the challenge, I think it's possible, even likely, that the government will succeed at the federal circuit court, potentially setting up another battle at the Supreme Court. And finally, even if the refunds proceed,

the process may take years to complete. That's part one, delay. As Scott Lee Kikomi, Alfredo Carrillo-Abregan, and Chad Smitzen argued for the Cato Institute, CAPE requires importers to jump through various hoops that they're not necessarily equipped to jump through. And those hoops actually come from CBP reinventing the wheel. The agency has issued refunds for improperly collected tariffs before, as recently as 2018, using automated processes and procedures for handling larger refunds. It stands to reason that CBP should be able to use such pre-existing.

systems for the court-ordered IEPA refunds, even if the sheer scale of those refunds meant they'd take longer. The fact that CAPE creates additional burdens on importers, then, signals that the federal government intends to keep as much of the illegally collected duties as possible. Now for part two of the federal government's strategy, argue. Here, Judge Eaton's swift broad rulings may have played right into the administration's hands. Eaton's order came down in the tariff case, Atmis Filtration Incorporated versus United States, which ended up on his desk because it asked for emergency relief to prevent CBP from finalizing import payments that included the improper tariffs. But Eaton held the first hearing in this tariff case even after the litigants

tried to withdraw their emergency request, which is odd. Then, rather than issuing a decision specific to the Atmos filtration case, he demanded broad refunds to all importers. In that order, Eaton explicitly declared that the CIT is exempt from the prohibition on national injunctions the Supreme Court laid out in its 2024 decision Trump v. Casa, because the CIT was not established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but by a separate 1980 law. Since the CASA opinion focused on the authority granted to federal courts by the 1789 law, Eton reasoned that the CIT wasn't necessarily included within it. Eaton further interpreted decisions from the Supreme Court to acknowledge the CIT's sole authority over matters of international trade. I don't think Eaton's argument holds water. The government is almost

certain to appeal his decision, likely on the grounds that Eden's order actually should be bound by CASA, under which the broad refunds would be improper. The government successfully made a similar appeal when the CIT blocked Trump's tariffs in the initial tariff case, 2025's VOS selections versus Trump. Even though the federal circuit court agreed with the CIT that Trump's tariffs were illegal, it still voided the CIT's injunction against the tariffs because of CASA. With this precedent already drawing a line around the CIT's universal injunction power, I seriously doubt that the same court will be convinced in the other direction by Eaton's reasoning here. Eaton's universal order was undoubtedly intended to provide redress to the U.S. importers

who suffered financial losses from illegally imposed duties. And his quick sweeping actions are also likely driven by urgency surrounding the building costs of dragging out the process. The longer the government delays its refunds to importers, the more interest accrues on those refunds. The Cato Institute estimates that for every month, refunds are delayed, the U.S. government will have to pay an additional $700 million in interest.

By that logic, Eaton's demands for a speedy, universal resolution to the refund question is also a result of his vested interest in limiting costs on the U.S. taxpayer. In that sense, I'm glad Eaton takes his duty as an arbiter of justice seriously. But good intentions don't necessarily make good judicial practice. In conferring additional authority upon oneself as a judge, or attempting to sidestep apparent restraints on one's authority,

is almost certainly bad judicial practice. Good intentions pave the road towards judicial overreach, slowly amassing power in the hands of appointed judges rather than elected officials. That's one of the implicit points, Justice Amy Coney-Barrant made in her majority opinion in Kasa. It's the judge's job to act with the restraint appropriate to his role, even in the face of unrestrained, inappropriate action from the executive. Behind all these logistical issues is the fundamental culprit of much of our modern political woes. We only have the imperial executive and the imperial judiciary because we have an impotent Congress. The federal government issued tariffs using shaky legal authority and now is fighting tooth and nail to avoid paying the refunds the court has said it owes.

The federal courts are similarly overstretching their authority in their attempts to curtail executive power. And in so doing, I fear they're also drawing out the process of giving plaintiffs actual relief. If Congress were willing to do its job and reassert its power of the purse, it could certainly create legislation mandating straightforward processes for refunds. Unfortunately, it seems increasingly clear that Congress is unwilling to do anything other than fight over funding the government itself, leaving the judicial and the executive branches to fight their own entrenched power struggle, with U.S. companies and consumers caught in the no-man's land between them.

We'll be right back after this quick break. That's it for my take. So now for today's reader question. Ryan from New York, New York asks, my question is regarding the officer who was acquitted in the Uvaldi school shooting. Could you discuss the specific charges and the reasoning for the dismissal? Were the initial charges in overreach? In January, Yuvaldi School District Officer Adrian Gonzalez was acquitted of all criminal charges for his actions

during the 2022 Rob Elementary School shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers. Gonzalez was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment, one for each of the 19 children killed, and 10 others who were injured but survived. The trial was the first legal action taken against authorities for the widely criticized, delayed police response to the shooting. After a heavily armed 18-year-old entered Rob Elementary,

376 armed guards responded to the scene. The combined force then waited over an hour before confronting the gunman. Yuvaldi police initially claimed that a school resource officer confronted the shooter before he entered the building, but that statement was later retracted. Once at the school, police officers waited for more than an hour before storming the building. One mother on the scene had been handcuffed for accosting the police to act, then convinced officers to remove her handcuffs, scaled offense, entered the school on her own, and removed her own two children from the school.

Adrian Gonzalez was the first to arrive at Rob Elementary following reports of an active shooter. According to multiple accounts, he waited several minutes before entering the school and evacuating some of the children, never encountering the shooter. Prosecutors argued that Gonzalez negligently waited three and a half minutes to enter and failed to adhere to his active shooter training. The defense said that he assessed the situation for only two minutes before safely evacuating children and was being scapegoated for the failures of the entire department. The acquittal is a mixed bag.

Charging Gonzalez with child endangerment certainly seems fair. Rifle shots were ringing out when he arrived at the scene, and he did not do what he was supposed to do in that situation and move towards gunfire without waiting for backup. If he had acted more decisively, more lives plausibly could have been saved. However, this particular legal response seemed disproportionate. Rather than charging the first individual on the scene with culpability for all the killed and injured children, the officers who subsequently arrived also should have faced consequences for their negligence.

The Texas Tribune described the combined force that waited outside Rob Elementary as, quote, larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo, end quote. Yet Gonzalez was the only officer individually charged with the crime. That said, Gonzalez's case is not the only legal action. taken following the shooting. Uvaldi School's police chief, Pete Aredondo, has been charged with child endangerment, and three Border Patrol agents have been sued to compel their testimony in Arodondo's case. Additionally, families have filed civil lawsuits against the state, the social media company meta, the maker of the rifle used in the shooting, and the maker of the video game

call of duty, and the town of Uvaldi itself has already settled with the families for $2 million. That's it for today's reader question, so now I'll head back to John. on to finish us out. Thanks, Audrey. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. This week, the U.S. Postal Service is expected to notify Congress that it is on track to run out of money in less than a year and request emergency actions to stabilize its finances.

Postmaster General David Steiner will reportedly ask a House Oversight Subcommittee to approve higher stamp prices, additional loans, and revised investment strategies. According to Steiner, the agency could move to end six-day-a-week deliveries, closed branches in remote locations or raise first-class mail stamp prices without urgent measures. The Government Accountability Office is also expected to advise lawmakers that addressing the Postal Services business model is critical to avoid billions in new annual expenses for retiree health care, likely in 2031. Reuters has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Exactly three weeks after the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team defeated Canada in the gold medal game. The U.S. men's Paralympic squad repeated the feat, beating Canada 6 to 2 in Milan, Italy, on Sunday. This time, however, the United States was the juggernaut, claiming its third straight Paralympic gold medal and becoming the first hockey team, Olympic or Paralympic, to win five back-to-back titles, including non-paralympic competitions. This team is so special. We love each other, U.S. defenseman Jack Wallace said.

It was unbelievable. I love these guys so much. NBC Olympics has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow.

For Isaac, Audrey, and the rest of the crew, this is John Law, signing all. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead,

Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.