FedEx will start returning the roughly $800 million in now-defunct IEEPA tariff duties it collected from shippers in August. Customers who agree to share data jump the queue.
Shippers who verify their accounts and opt in to FedEx sharing limited shipment and refund data with vendor partners will be “prioritized for disbursement.” Those who decline will still receive refunds, but on a slower timeline. The duties are being returned as the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs. As the customs broker on those shipments, FedEx collected the duties at the border, which is why the money is sitting on its books.
How it works: If FedEx was your broker, you do not need to file anything. FedEx submits refund claims to CBP and passes the money through automatically. The company is processing more than 20 million dutied entries across hundreds of thousands of accounts.
It plans to launch a portal by July 10 where shippers can check whether their refund has landed and what it is worth. First disbursements are expected on or about August 10 and will continue on a rolling basis.
The catch: Not every dollar comes back at once.
Brokerage and clearance fees that FedEx charged on top of the duties are not included in the automatic refund. Several class-action suits say they should be
Entries CBP has already “finally liquidated” are the hardest tranche to process and will be handled in a later refund phase, so those claims remain unresolved
Shippers who used another broker or self-filed have to pursue their own claims with CBP
UPS and DHL run parallel playbooks. UPS is claiming just under $500 million across about 2.5 million Phase 1 entries and applies refunds to any open invoices first. DHL says it will reconcile and pay out 30 to 90 days after each refund lands.
Where it ends up: Carriers refund the duties to whoever paid, but retailers are using the money in different ways. BJ's routed about $20 million into member price cuts and Costco says it's lowering prices, while Walmart's guidance assumes no refund impact. A few are selling the claim outright: BJ's nearly sold its claim to Oaktree Capital at 70 cents on the dollar before backing out, and now faces a lawsuit over it.
