The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund.

The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.

In October, I bought a $250 product from a Canadian company + about $30 shipping & taxes and thought I was good. A few weeks later, FedEx sends me an $92 bill for the duty that they had to pay. I just ignored it since I was never given that notice up front. If they really wanted it, they could have had the vendor contact me. But at least they're not getting that bit of profit now.

Or maybe this is used to justify a new emergency federal law that all purchases must be reported on your tax return, just in case the government ever needs to refund any illegally collected import taxes.

I think I'm kidding, but I'm not really sure anymore.

Or the government will not refund, and add more illegal tariffs. That wouldn’t be surprising, unfortunately

There have been no decisions about refunds. The court avoided addressing that.

That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming

Sometimes the consumer (more) directly pays when buying from overseas, most of the time you're right it gets rolled into the price at checkout if the company is large enough or just in larger prices buying in the US. I've had a few packages I had to pay extra import duties on with the UPS/FedEx agent fees tacked on top mostly kickstarters.

> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

Elections have consequences.

Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them, etc.

Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too?

(I know the answer is practically ’no’, but it does still seem to me that the bureaucracy and companies that went along with this obviously illegal operation bear some culpability...)

There are usually a few companies between the importer and the consumer. So the importers could only refund the business they sold it to and likely won't if nothing was specified in the purchase contract.

Though this is obviously a first so expect a billion lawsuits about this.

When I have bought things internationally, I have always been the one doing the importing. This means I paid some Trump taxes and I will get my money back.

Most of the total tax collected seems to have been absorbed by the importers, lowering margins.

Why do we repeatedly say that tarrifs are passed off in full to the consumer in the form of higher prices? Isn't that as obviously wrong as the argument for them, that they're paid entirely by the other countries?

Is there a reason to believe, or evidence, that it's not a mixture of the two?

edit: I want to highlight esseph's reply has a link to evidence that last year's tarrifs were passed off 90% to consumers, which is exactly the type of info I was looking for.