Amazon says that it has received hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds from tariffs imposed by President Trump.
Some of the money returned via the refunds, which came after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tariffs were illegal, will be passed back onto customers.
“We are participating in the tariff refund process, and as I mentioned earlier, we received approximately $600 million in the [three months of] Q2,” Brian Olsavsky, the CFO of Amazon.com Inc, said in an earnings call reviewed by Fortune.
Olsavsky went on to say that the amount was “limited” because the firm began “forward-buying” and “positioning inventory” to swerve tariff costs and because Amazon is “not the importer of record” for the “large majority” of items sold in its store.
“In cases where we did see an increase in cost due to tariffs, we largely absorbed these costs rather than pass them on to customers,” he continued.
When Amazon receives the refunds, it will “proactively” contact the affected customers and automatically issue them with the refunds, Olsavsky said.
“Otherwise, like other large retailers, we’ll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers,” he added.
Trump’s tariffs were a key part of his economic agenda during his second administration, with the president imposing the levies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
However, on February 20, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the IEEPA does not give the president authority to impose tariffs.
The decision invalidated two sets of tariffs imposed under the IEEPA, with the first relating to imports from China, Mexico and Canada - which were implemented under emergencies relating to alleged illicit drugs.
The other set of tariffs was imposed on U.S. imports citing an alleged emergency related to the trade deficit.
Just days ago, Trump raged on Truth Social that Supreme Court rulings against him had cost the country “TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”
In April, Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box that he would “remember” the companies that did not apply for tariff refunds.
In January, a month before the Supreme Court ruling, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC at the World Economic Forum that the impact of the tariffs was becoming visible.
“So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items, and you see some sellers are deciding that they’re passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they’ll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between,” he said.
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