Tariff Refunds Hit $86 Billion Paid — June's $49B Surge and Who's Still Waiting

The Numbers as of July 10, 2026

CBP's updated declaration, filed with the Court of International Trade, puts the refund program here:

• $166 billion — total IEEPA duties collected (April 2025–February 2026) across ~330,000 importers and ~53 million entries. This is the full refundable pool.
• $121.75 billion — claims accepted for processing as of July 10, up from ~$90 billion in mid-June.
• $104.29 billion — refunds authorized as of the June 29 filing.
• $86.3 billion — actually repaid to importers as of July 10, including statutory interest. Two weeks earlier the figure was $71 billion; two weeks before that, roughly $40 billion.
• ~$130 billion — where analysts expect total refunds to land once all three CAPE phases run their course (before interest).

In plain terms: a little over half the money the government owes has been paid, and the pace is accelerating rather than slowing.

June Was the Biggest Month Yet — Refunds Now Outrun Collections

Treasury data released July 13 shows the government paid out $49.1 billion in tariff refunds in June — the largest month since payments began in May, and more than double the $23.6 billion in new tariff revenue collected over the same period. For the first time since tariffs became a major revenue line, the tariff program is a net cash outflow for the US government.

The scale is macro-visible: the refund wave drove the first widening of the federal budget deficit this fiscal year. The nine-month FY2026 gap came in at $1.37 trillion, about 2% wider than the same point in 2025 — a reversal attributed directly to the refund payments for tariffs the Supreme Court declared illegal. Budget analysts expect the effect to be temporary; the refund pool is finite, and new tariff actions (Section 122's replacement, the pending Section 301 investigations) are designed to rebuild the revenue line.

The 'Accidental Stimulus' — Where the Money Is Going

Business press coverage this week framed the refund wave as an accidental stimulus: tens of billions of dollars landing on corporate balance sheets in a quarter when input costs are still elevated. PepsiCo told investors it will use its tariff refunds to help offset commodity inflation; retailers and manufacturers that imported heavily during the 2025 tariff window are booking similar windfalls.

The pattern in who has been paid is worth noting. The approved refunds so far cover only about 30% of all import entries — skewed heavily toward large importers like Walmart and Ford, whose customs teams filed clean CAPE declarations early with correct ACH details. The long tail of smaller importers — the other ~70% of entries — is where most of the friction, and most of the unclaimed money, now sits.

Who's Still Waiting: The $80 Billion Gap

Roughly $80 billion of the pool remains unpaid, and CBP's own filings identify exactly where it's stuck:

• 8,384 approved declarations have no valid banking information. These claims are fully approved — the money is authorized — but CBP pays by ACH only, and the refund cannot move until the importer fixes routing/account details in ACE.
• Entries with antidumping/countervailing duties, active drawback claims, or open administrative protests are held for manual handling. Phase 2 (live since June 29) started clearing the AD/CVD backlog, but throughput is slower than Phase 1's clean entries.
• Entries not filed through the ACE portal face delays with no published workaround.
• Finally liquidated entries — roughly $11.4 billion — wait on CAPE Phase 3 in late July, and the government is arguing in court that only importers who filed suit at the CIT can be paid on them at all.

Cato's July analysis puts about $25 billion of claims in an 'unprocessed, no timeline' bucket. If your refund hasn't arrived, the odds are high you're in one of these four categories rather than simply 'in the queue.'

What to Do If You Haven't Been Paid

1. Check your claim status in ACE. Run the REV-615 CAPE Refunds Trade Report — it shows where each declaration sits (accepted, approved, transmitted, rejected).
2. Verify your ACH enrollment today. With 8,384 approved claims stuck on bad banking data, this is the single most common self-inflicted delay. Confirm routing and account numbers in ACE match your bank exactly.
3. If your entries carry AD/CVD or reconciliation flags, file through Phase 2 now if you haven't — it opened June 29 and clean early filings are processing first, same as Phase 1.
4. If your entries are finally liquidated, your path is Phase 3 in late July — but eligibility is contested. Read our Phase 3 guide and check whether the 180-day protest window on any of your entries is still open.
5. If your claim was rejected, fix and refile rather than waiting — a rejection adds 30–60 days, and the most common causes (data mismatches, missing ACH, ineligible entries) are correctable.
6. Estimate what you're owed independently. Refunds include 6–7% statutory interest compounded daily; validate CBP's math against your own entry data before accepting a figure.

What Happens Next

Three things to watch through late July and August:

• CAPE Phase 3 opens in late July, covering finally liquidated entries — with the government's Federal Circuit appeal contesting whether importers who never sued can be paid on them. A class-action certification motion filed at the CIT aims to sweep those importers in regardless.
• The refund pace suggests the bulk of Phases 1–2 money pays out by early fall. At June's ~$49 billion/month rate, the accepted-claims backlog clears within a couple of months — though the stuck categories above won't clear on autopilot.
• Interest keeps accruing on unpaid balances at 6% (corporations) to 7% (individuals), compounded daily — the one consolation for importers still in the queue.

The window where filing quality determined payment speed is closing; from here, the importers who lose out are the ones who never filed, filed with errors they didn't fix, or hold finally liquidated entries and take no protective action.