$100bn out of $166bn IEEPA Tariff Refunded Three Congressman Demand Probe in Slow Refund

[ABS News Service/23.10.2026]

A group of Congressional Democrats is calling on the Government Accountability Office to investigate the Administration’s handling of refunds for tariffs paid under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Sen. Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-Ga) and Reps. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif) said GAO needs to investigate problems with the refund process.

In the letter to GAO, the lawmakers raise concerns about the accuracy of the tariff refund process and question whether consumers, who bore the financial burden of higher prices as a result of the tariffs, will ultimately benefit from the refunds.

The Administration was required to the US Court of International Trade to refund the tariffs after the Supreme Court rules that the President did not have authority to impose sweeping global tariffs under IEEPA.

As of August, some $100 billion collected under IEEPA tariffs had been refunded, out of a total of $166 billion in tariffs.

“This is without question the largest tariff refund operation in U.S. history, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had to create new systems and processes to handle this enormous task,” the lawmakers said. “We are concerned about the ability of the administration to completely and accurately refund all IEEPA tariffs. Additionally, we are concerned to what extent consumers, upon whom the financial burden of the tariffs fell, were able to receive any benefits from the refunds.”

Issues to Review

The lawmakers asked GAO to review the following issues:

· What actions has CBP taken to update its system to identify and calculate IEEPA refunds and related interest payments?

· To what extent has CBP established controls to ensure IEEPA refunds are complete, accurate, properly authorized and protected against improper or duplicate payments?

· How many importers received IEEPA refunds? What sectors or industries do they represent? How much did they receive, and in which industries and product categories were refunds concentrated? ! After receiving tariff refunds, how had importers transmitted the financial benefit downstream to wholesalers, retailers, or final consumers? What challenges did they encounter?

· To what extent did the IEEPA refunds affect product availability, employment, investment, or firms’ decisions to absorb future cost increases?

“We hope GAO’s review will help illuminate how consumers have suffered from higher prices across a range of goods over the last year due to these unlawful IEEPA tariffs,” the lawmakers concluded.