U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expected to begin sending refund checks to importers in the coming weeks, returning duties collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to the agency’s published IEEPA duty refund program guidance. The money will land in corporate accounts. What happens after that depends entirely on each company’s conscience.
Cards Against Humanity, the party-game maker known for turning consumer advocacy into performance art, has publicly committed to returning every refund dollar to the customers who paid tariff-inflated prices. FedEx has made a similar pledge. But according to a survey of 25 chief financial officers at major importing companies that has circulated in business media, not one said their company plans to pass refunds along to buyers. The sponsoring research firm and full methodology behind the survey have not been made publicly available, so the figure should be treated as a directional signal from a small, unverified sample rather than a definitive census.
That split raises a question with real money behind it: when emergency tariffs get reversed, who actually gets paid back?
How the CBP refund process works
Under CBP’s IEEPA duty refund program, the importer of record, meaning the company that originally paid the tariff, files a claim with the agency. If approved, CBP sends the refund directly to that company. From there, the importer decides whether to pocket the money, reinvest it, or share some portion with the retailers, small businesses, or individual consumers who ultimately bore the cost through higher prices.
There is no federal requirement to pass refunds downstream. No regulation compels an importer to return a cent to end buyers. Every refund that reaches a consumer’s hands will get there because a company chose to send it, not because the law demanded it.
Two companies break from the pack
Cards Against Humanity announced its refund pledge publicly, consistent with a brand that once raised $100,000 to dig a pointless hole in the ground and later sued SpaceX over a property dispute. The company has not yet disclosed the exact dollar figure it expects to recover or the precise method it will use to get money back to buyers, whether through direct payments, account credits, or something else. No independent source, regulatory filing, or third-party audit has confirmed the amounts involved or the distribution plan. Until those details surface, the commitment is a public promise, not a completed transaction.
FedEx went on the record with the Associated Press, stating that if it receives IEEPA refunds, it intends to return the money to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges. The AP report attributes the commitment to the company but does not name a specific FedEx spokesperson.
As of early June 2026, these two pledges account for nearly all public commitments by U.S. importers. No major retailer, including Amazon, Walmart, or Target, has announced a similar plan.
Why most importers plan to keep the money
The CFO survey behind the “zero of 25” figure has been referenced across business media, though the sponsoring research firm, full methodology, and identities of the companies polled have not been made publicly available. The sample is small and unverified, so the number should be read as a directional signal rather than a definitive census. That said, the direction is consistent with decades of corporate behavior around tariff windfalls: companies treat refunds as balance-sheet recoveries, not consumer rebates.
The reasoning from a corporate-finance standpoint is not hard to follow. Many importers say they absorbed part of the tariff cost themselves by accepting thinner margins, delaying price hikes, or reworking supply chains. In that framing, a refund simply restores money the company lost rather than money the customer overpaid.
Consumer advocates see it differently. Retail prices did rise during the tariff period, and households felt it at checkout. A refund that stops at the importer’s bank account does nothing to offset those costs for the families that paid them.
Without a legal mandate or a standardized pass-through mechanism, the default outcome is clear: the check stays where it lands.
What consumers can actually do right now
Even where companies have pledged to share, the logistics are unfinished. Cards Against Humanity has not explained how it will match refund dollars to specific orders or what happens when a buyer cannot be reached. FedEx has not detailed how it will trace which shippers or end consumers paid tariff-inflated charges. Both companies are making commitments that require back-end infrastructure they have not yet described.
On the government side, CBP has published guidance on the refund program but has not disclosed the total dollar volume of expected payouts, the number of eligible importers, or a firm processing timeline. Many underlying claims are still working through the U.S. Court of International Trade, and outcomes could vary by company and product category. That means the timeline for when any individual consumer might see money is still in flux.
For now, consumers who bought goods during the IEEPA tariff window have limited options. There is no central government portal for individuals to file tariff refund claims; the process runs through importers, not households. The most practical step is to watch for direct communication from the brand or retailer where the purchase was made and to keep receipts from the tariff period in case a company does set up a claims process.
What the refund gap tells us about who really pays for tariffs
This is not just a story about two companies and a survey. It exposes the plumbing of how tariff costs travel through the economy. Duties are paid by importers, baked into wholesale prices, marked up at retail, and absorbed by consumers at the register. But when those duties are reversed, the refund pipeline runs in only one direction: back to the importer. Getting that money the rest of the way to the person who actually paid more for a product requires a company to voluntarily build a process, spend resources on distribution, and accept a hit to its margins.
Cards Against Humanity and FedEx have said they will do that. The 25 CFOs in the survey, and likely many companies beyond them, have signaled they will not. Whether public pressure, congressional attention, or competitive dynamics shift that calculation in the coming weeks will determine how much of the tariff era’s cost burden is ultimately returned to the households that carried it.
If history is any guide, most of that money is staying in corporate accounts. The question now is whether enough people are paying attention to change the pattern.
