Containerships at the Port of Los Angeles. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg)
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The Trump administration confirmed in athat it will pay interest on refunds that it ultimately must make after the Supreme Court struck down the president’s contested global tariffs.
U.S. officials haven’t yet committed to returning all of the billions of dollars in duties that importers already paid or how a refund process should work after the justices announced their ruling last month. The interest question hasn’t been central to the legal wrangling but underscores the massive financial stakes.
The administration could owe an additional $700 million in interest for each month that passes,released earlier this week by the Cato Institute. The government collected approximately $170 billion in tariffs at issue in the court fight, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that President Donald Trump unlawfully used theto impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on goods entering the country.
A senior trade official told a judge in aMarch 4 that “any validated refund of IEEPA duties would include interest.”