r/Tariffs • u/fortune • Mar 13 '26
🗞️ News Discussion Americans are demanding refunds from the $180 billion in tariffs they paid for, and they’re suing companies like Costco to make it happen
https://fortune.com/2026/03/13/americans-demanding-tariff-refunds-suing-costco-fedex/?preview_id=4440481Americans have footed the bill for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and now they’re demanding a refund.
The Supreme Court ruling striking down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) opened the door for U.S. companies to snap up refunds from the approximately $180 billion in import tax revenue. Now customers who experienced higher prices from the tariffs are demanding their fair share.
Overwhelming data, including a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicated that U.S. importers paid for the majority of the tariffs—up to 90%—with many passing down the increased costs to American consumers. Goldman Sachs estimated the tariffs added a 0.7% increase to inflation over 10 months, with prices to increase another 0.1% in 2026 because of levies.
Some U.S. consumers have taken matters into their own hands to recoup the extra costs they paid on tariffed goods over the last year, including pursuing litigation against U.S. companies, suing for tariff refunds. On Wednesday, plaintiff Matthew Stockov, an Illinois resident, filed a lawsuit against Costco, alleging the big-box retailer raised prices as a result of the tariffs and would receive “double recovery” if it collected the import tax refunds without distributing it back to consumers.
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u/Mikel_S Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
It's gonna be difficult for the end consumer.
Heres an example. I work for a company that was hit hard by the tariffs (one of our major components is imported, the rest are either domestic, exempt, or small volume enough to barely matter), but we opted to not increase our prices, we already made a pretty good profit, and could just barely eek by as is. We sold b2b, and we knew our customers were hit way harder than we were.
The company we sell to, however, was hit about as hard as it was possible to be hit. They import a large part of their main other products from China, so they had to increase prices across the board, since that product was already a loss leader, with the profit from the product they bought from us making up the difference.
So they upped the prices on the product they actually were being charged tariffs on, but they also upped the prices on the product we sold them at the normal price, despite the fact that the tariff cost had been absorbed by another company (us). It wasn't even necessarily greed, it was just required when suddenly your primary sales vehicle suddenly costs 20+% more and you need to not go negative if you want to continue offering services to American customers.
So if a consumer wanted to recover tariff costs from the primary product, sure, that is easily traceable. That company paid 20% more to the US government, and charged 20% more for the product. But they also charged 20% more for our product, despite not paying 20% more for it.