Trump administration refunds $100-billion in struck-down tariffs

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has refunded about US$100-billion from tariffs that it collected before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down those duties, a court filing showed.

The court filing in the U.S. Court of International Trade said that “refunds (duties plus interest) of approximately US$100-billion have been completed using the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries Refund component, certified by the agency, and sent to the U.S. Department of Treasury for disbursement.”

The amount as of the end of July was noted in Tuesday’s filing by U.S. customs officials.

It represented more than half of the US$166-billion collected in tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down in February.

Trump has made tariffs a central pillar of his foreign and trade policies despite criticism from some analysts and legal setbacks.

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Critics have complained that the refunds have not reached households but have instead gone to corporate importers.

“Trump is sending the ’refunds’ to the companies, not working people. Every single cent of these refunds should go back to American consumers,” Democratic Congressman Greg Casar said this week.

The Supreme Court ruled against most of Trump’s widest-ranging tariffs on Feb. 20, finding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose tariffs on goods imported from trading partners.

Trump responded to that ruling by escalating his trade campaign, calling Supreme Court justices “disloyal” and issuing new temporary 10-per-cent tariffs under a different legal authority that, like IEEPA, no president had previously used to impose tariffs.

The president then issued another round of global tariffs imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which is meant to combat unfair or discriminatory economic practices by other nations.