LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration is paying U.S. businesses billions of dollars - reimbursements for some of the tariffs they paid that the Supreme Court ruled in February were illegal. But will any of that money make its way back to shoppers? NPR's Stephan Bisaha talked to one customer who's still waiting.
STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: When we're talking tariff refunds, we're talking more than $160 billion. And Sarah Alonzo (ph) wants her cut.
SARAH ALONZO: I'm like, well, give me my money (laughter). I was like, open the door, cut the check and give me my money.
BISAHA: Money that she paid for a wheelchair she uses to get around Tampa, Florida, after her old one finally fell apart. The new one is both powered and lightweight.
ALONZO: About 75 pounds. It folds. It fits into just about any vehicle very easily. You know, it's just the perfect chair for me.
BISAHA: But it's made in China. When she bought the new chair last year, tariffs on Chinese goods were a sky-high 145%. Alonzo paid an extra $3,500.
ALONZO: There was no reason that I had to pay, you know, double for this chair. None. And, you know, the federal government should give me my money back.
BISAHA: The thing is, though, the federal government can't give her that money back. That's because she did not pay the tariff directly to the government. Like most people, she paid a business - in her case, UPS - which imported the chair. Now the government is refunding UPS, and UPS told her in an email her refund is in the works.
ALONZO: When I got that email, I was like, well, you know, maybe there's hope.
BISAHA: Now, shipping companies have to give the money back because they explicitly charged customers tariff fees. That's according to the dean of Syracuse University's College of Law, Terence Lau. He says if FedEx got charged 100 bucks to import your package, they then billed you 100 bucks.
TERENCE LAU: And now that FedEx and UPS have received a refund of that $100 from the federal government, they are absolutely obligated to return it to the person they collected it from. Otherwise, it would be a pretty open-and-shut lawsuit against them for unjust enrichment.
BISAHA: UPS, DHL and FedEx all say they are returning tariff dollars to customers. But do not expect the same from retailers. Many of them did not spell out how much customers were paying for tariffs and instead baked that cost directly into higher prices. So it's hard, maybe even impossible, for the companies to know how much extra each shopper paid because of tariffs.
LAU: It's like the retailer stirred the tax into the batter. So once it's cooked into the cake, you can't just back it out ingredient by ingredient anymore because it's not separated.
BISAHA: Michael Ettlinger is a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. He says customers and businesses share the cost of tariffs. But for the most part, businesses are the ones keeping the refund.
MICHAEL ETTLINGER: It's all just a giant transfer from consumers to corporations, which - you can't really design a worse tax than that.
BISAHA: Some retailers like Walmart say they'll use tariff refunds to lower prices, and companies like Costco and Nintendo are facing class-action lawsuits from shoppers demanding refunds. Ettlinger says, well, some businesses are benefiting.
ETTLINGER: It's important to keep an eye on what the real sin here is, which is that the government imposed illegal tariffs.
BISAHA: Sandra Alonzo (ph) heard from UPS about a month ago about her refund being processed but hasn't received anything yet.
ALONZO: It'd be nice to update me 'cause I sure would like that money. It would be very useful right now, considering how expensive everything is now, a year later.
BISAHA: UPS says it takes up to three months to get the refunds it receives from the government to customers. Of course, Alonzo's paid higher prices at plenty of retailers because of tariffs. So for her, this is one refund on the way and many more unlikely to come.
Stephan Bisaha, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE IRONSIDES' "LIGURIAN DREAM")
FADEL: I'll just note here - UPS is a financial supporter of NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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