Refunds to importers expose Trump’s lies about who pays for tariffs
President Trump’s false, ridiculous and routinely uttered claims that foreigners pay for the tariffs he imposed last year were recently exposed for the lies that they were. In an August, 2025, Truth Social Post (caps are the way he posted the diatribe) Trump wrote:
RECIPROCAL TARIFFS TAKE EFFECT AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT! BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, LARGELY FROM COUNTRIES THAT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR MANY YEARS, LAUGHING ALL THE WAY, WILL START FLOWING INTO THE USA. THE ONLY THING THAT CAN STOP AMERICA’S GREATNESS WOULD BE A RADICAL LEFT COURT THAT WANTS TO SEE OUR COUNTRY FAIL!
That bizarre misunderstanding of how tariffs work was exposed when, last February, the U.S. Supreme Court (on a 6-3 vote) ruled that Trump’s tariffs were illegal.
So how was Trump’s ignorance exposed? Well, if Trump were correct about exporting countries paying tariffs, you’d expect a line of foreigners coming up to the refund window to get their illegally obtained money back.
But … it didn’t work out that way. It isn’t foreigners who get their money back, it’s Americans. Yes, it’s Americans who have a claim to the tariff refunds. Why? The answer is simple: It’s because Americans paid the tariffs in the first place. A study published in Time earlier this year concluded that American consumers and importers pay for 96% of Trump’s tariffs.
Despite Trump’s ignorant, blustery and spurious claims, his illegally imposed tariffs were not paid “by countries that have taken advantage of the United States for many years.”
They were paid by American businesses and consumers, who have had to eat the price increases at both the wholesale and retail levels.
As a remedy for the fiasco that Trump created, there’s a newly developed “tariff refund portal” that gives affected businesses an opportunity to make claims on the $166 billion that they’ve paid because of Trump’s illegal edict.
Companies like Adidas, Best Buy, Costco and many other well known brands are applying for refunds. Whether they’ll return that refunded money to customers who actually paid for the tariffs through the higher prices passed on to them at points of purchase remains to be seen.
Though I think retail purchasers should get the money, I haven’t found anything about a claim portal for individual consumers and I doubt that I will. That’s too bad, because tariffs have cost people plenty. Last February, a congressional committee found that American families have paid more than $1,700 each in tariff costs since Trump entered office.
Trump may be right about foreign countries “laughing all the way” when it comes to tariffs, but it won’t be about the money he thinks they’re taking from us. They’re laughing because we have such an ill-informed leader that he doesn’t understand the first thing about how tariffs work.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.
Photo: Port of Long Beach, public domain, wikimedia commons
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