Wilbur Ross: $166 Billion in Tariff Refunds Are Going to the Wrong People

Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says the roughly $166 billion the U.S. government owes importers after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's second-term tariffs is flowing to the wrong recipients—companies that likely passed some or all of the cost to shoppers.

In an interview with Fortune, Ross argued that any importer that forwarded part of a tariff to its customers will now collect "more than the money" it originally paid.

"If you give me the refund now, I'm actually getting paid more than the money that I laid out," Ross said. "I'm very surprised that that's the way that they went about it."

Federal Reserve data backs the premise. American households absorbed about 90% of Trump's second-term tariffs, the Fed estimates.

Yet the refunds, ordered after the court invalidated the duties, are being sent to the companies that wrote the checks at the border.

What changed from the first term to the second?

Ross ran the Commerce Department from 2017 through early 2021. His signature action came on March 8, 2018, when he concluded that imported steel and aluminum threatened national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

Trump then imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminum, citing China's steel glut.

That first-term push had a narrow mandate. "My role was to work on trying to fix the trade balance and try to get that drawn into a more sensible balance," Ross said.

The Section 232 duties also came with a rolling list of country exemptions, granted and revoked through 2018 and 2019.

Trump's second-term trade team took a different legal path. The administration invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the 1977 statute that gives the president broad authority over commerce during a declared emergency.

It used IEEPA to tariff nearly every trading partner and to pursue non-trade goals, including a 40% duty on Brazilian imports linked to the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Why is Trump using tariffs differently now?

Ross, who served as a sounding board for Trump's earlier trade fights, said the shift is intentional.

"It's a whole different picture," he said. "He made the decision not just to use the tariffs for purposes of changing the trade deficit. He used them for a variety of other purposes."

Congressional and party control, Ross added, expanded what Trump could do.

"He was much stronger as he went into the second term than he was when he went into the first term," Ross said.

His second-term position, Ross explained, was different: "First term, he did not control the Congress, and he did not really control the Republican Party. Second term, he clearly controlled both, so he was in a position to do more things the way that he wanted to do them."

Ross then stressed that the broadened use of tariffs was a presidential call, not an agency one.

"It's not a question for the Commerce Department to decide," he said. "This was a presidential decision to expand the use of the tariffs."

Who is returning the refunds—and who isn't?

Companies are split. UPS and FedEx have pledged to return their share of the refunds to customers.

Amazon reported about $640 million in tariff refunds during the second quarter, but the company has said it may pay back only a limited number of customers.

Shoppers filed a class action against Amazon in May, alleging the company withheld refunds they were owed.

Amazon's finance chief has argued the e-commerce giant largely absorbed the tariff costs rather than passing them on.

Ross used Amazon to illustrate the wider problem.

"Let's say you're Amazon, and let's say you passed on half the tariff to your customer," he said. "Why should you get more than half the refund? The customer is the one who ultimately paid it. He didn't get any refund, and yet he's the one who paid it."

In Ross's view, any importer that shifted part of the duty downstream "picked up an extra profit as a result of the tariffs," an outcome he called "conceptually flawed."

Who keeps the $166 billion?

The refund process will shape how the ruling reverberates through corporate America.

Logistics carriers with national footprints now face a choice between goodwill and balance sheets.

Retailers and marketplaces that absorbed the costs themselves may end up in a different legal position than those who passed them on—a distinction likely to draw more class-action filings.

Whether importers, class-action plaintiffs, or Congress end up redirecting the money will determine who actually pays for the IEEPA duties—and who profits from them.