US courts have ruled Trump’s tariffs were illegal – yet the money has not been returned and was used to justify sweeping tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.

The Supreme Court has ruled. The Federal Circuit has ruled. The Court of International Trade has ruled. And yet the administration that collected $164.7 billion in tariff taxes the Supreme Court has declared were always illegal has not returned a dollar and has not uttered a word of apology for using those funds to justify the most consequential fiscal legislation in a generation.

That legislation is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on 4 July, 2025. During its debate, illegal tariff revenues were cited as the mechanism that would “pay for” sweeping tax cuts. The people who paid those tariffs, small businesses directly and then American consumers through who absorbed them as higher prices, are overwhelmingly not the people who received the cuts. The arithmetic tells a story the administration has no interest in telling.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Learning Resources v. Trump did not say the IEEPA tariffs became illegal after the fact. It said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act never granted the president this authority in the first place. The $164.7 billion was never the federal government’s to spend, to budget with, or to offer as a fiscal offset to........

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