The Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tariffs were unconstitutional back in February. Illegal. Now the bill is coming due. The government owes somewhere north of $166 billion in refunds.
Monday morning, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened a portal called CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) so businesses can apply to get their money back.
Good for them. Seriously. They got hosed by the Trump Administration’s terrible trade policies.
But here’s the question nobody in the Trump administration wants to answer. Those businesses paid the import tax. And a lot of them passed that cost onto to you. Higher prices at the store. More expensive goods. Your grocery bill, your trip to the hardware store, your online cart. All of it quietly inflated while the tariffs were in full swing. Businesses who tried to be transparent about the tariff increase were ridiculed by the Administration for being unpatriotic.
So, the business may get its money back from the Treasury. You get nothing.
You paid more. You don’t get a portal. You don’t get a refund. You don’t even get an apology from the Administration.
The refunds are not automatic, by the way. Businesses have to apply. Legal experts are already warning about obstacles for businesses to receive their money. And small businesses have it the worst. They are the least equipped to navigate a federal claims process. They don’t have the large corporate legal and lobbying teams that big business does.
This was sold to the American public as economic patriotism. Putting “America first.” What it actually was, was an illegal power grab by President Trump and allowed by a Republican Congress too afraid to push back that raised prices on working families.
The tariffs were illegal. The costs were real. And the people who actually felt it most aren’t getting a dime back.
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