By
Joseph Zeballos-Roig
Corporate America is receiving its tariff refunds faster than most observers expected. Walmart and Target were the latest retail giants to report giant refunds: about $3 billion for the Arkansas-based company and $1 billion for its Minneapolis-based competitor.
The swift pace of these refunds is juicing corporate profits in the year’s second quarter. The Wall Street Journal reported more than 40 S&P 500 companies expect to be refunded $9.6 billion. Those companies, among others, paid tariffs on a wide range of imported goods before the Supreme Court ruled this year that the duties were illegally imposed. The court’s ruling set off a mad dash for refunds, particularly among smaller firms that cut staff, paused investment plans or otherwise struggled to stay afloat.
President Donald Trump said in April he would “remember” the companies that skipped getting the refunds. On Thursday outside the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent angrily denounced the process as a “corporate bonanza.”
Chief executives, though, should be on their toes against a punitive response from the White House. President Donald Trump said in April he would “remember” the companies that skipped getting the refunds. On Thursday outside the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent angrily denounced the process as a “corporate bonanza” after fielding a question about Target’s refunds.
“The American people had the money in the U.S. Treasury, and we were forced to give it back,” Bessent said. He added that a new legal workaround the administration devised to replace previous import taxes will allow it to “get that tariff income back.”
Bessent’s rhetoric was unusually aggressive, more reminiscent of a leftist firebrand threatening confiscation in Latin America than someone who made a career out of managing hedge funds and earned financier fame for orchestrating a winning bet against the British pound. “The party warning against socialism and communism wants you to know that your tariff dollars (seized illegally) belong in the U.S. Treasury for your own good,” Brookings Institute fellow Jessica Riedl said on X.
So far, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued $100 billion in refunds, according to a court filing. But shoppers hoping for a refund after paying higher prices starting last year are like Charlie Brown running to kick the football. Target CEO Michael Fiddelke said in a recent earnings call that the company lowered prices on 10,000 items over the past year and plans to roll out more cost reductions. Walmart CEO John Furner is on the same page. “Our intent was to deploy much of that back into price, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said in a company earnings call, adding that ground beef and school supplies were among the items Walmart had focused on.
I’m among those Americans with a tariff paper trail. Last year, I ordered a ceramic Argentine penguin pitcher to add a touch of Buenos Aires to my apartment. Then I got saddled with an unexpected $45 charge from FedEx because it had initially paid the import tax. I’m among the lucky group of tariff-weary consumers, because FedEx has said it intends to issue refunds and launched a new portal for customers to track the status of their payments. In my case, the portal shows FedEx hasn’t received the money from the federal government that I am owed. Good grief!
The American business environment has morphed into something less certain or recognizable. Now the state presides over a growing piece of the economy. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trump administration has taken stakes in 37 companies, mostly those involved in semiconductor and critical mineral production.
The American business environment has morphed into something less certain or recognizable. Now the state presides over a growing piece of the economy.
Tariffs serve as the administration’s sword and shield. Trump is comfortable with weaponizing his signature tariffs to coerce allies and adversaries alike and with casting them as a defensive tool in the zero-sum world he lives in: one where everyone from Brussels to Beijing desires to make a fool out of the U.S. He has also berated chief executives. Most notably, Intel’s Lip Bu-Tan was on the receiving end of Trump’s anger last summer before the Commerce Department took a stake in the company.
Trump has also shown he can swing stocks by simply taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social. Last month, Truth Social’s parent company announced plans to sell sneak peeks at his market-moving posts to Wall Street investors. In particular, this proposed arrangement presents a ripe opportunity to high-frequency traders in which an edge of milliseconds means the difference between a hefty payoff or a sizable loss. The announced plan has prompted a lawsuit objecting to the idea of the president’s company improperly monetizing information to a select elite group of investors.
Now tariffs are embedded in the U.S. economy: Americans are left footing the bill, and businesses are stuck operating in a cloudy environment where the only certainty is more uncertainty. Additional refunds are indeed possible if legal challenges against the Trump administration succeed. But the president remains volatile, and corporate America will need to tread carefully around him.
Joseph Zeballos-Roig
Joseph Zeballos-Roig is a reporter who has covered economic policy and politics for Semafor, Business Insider and Quartz, among other publications.
