The U.S. government could owe more than $175 billion in refunds to importers after the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a 6-3 decision that tariffs unilaterally imposed by President Donald Trump are illegal, a new estimate says.
The potential refunds to a broad range of companies would be for tariffs already collected by the government since Trump slapped on the duties without authorization from Congress.
The $175 billion refund estimate from the Penn-Wharton Budget Model was produced at the request of the Reuters news wire service. The model is a non-partisan fiscal research group at the University of Pennsylvania.
Multiple importers already have pending lawsuits seeking refunds of their tariffs, citing lower-court rulings that found Trump’s tariffs are not legal.
The Supreme Court ruling on Friday did not say that the federal government could keep the money it has already collected from those tariffs but didn’t explicitly address refunds.
