White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a news article on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that reads “Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm” during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 29, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images
Amazon disclosed Thursday that it has received $600 million in tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled that many of President Donald Trump’s levies were illegal, and it expects to return some of that cash to customers.
“We are participating in the tariff refund process and, as I mentioned earlier, we received approximately $600 million in Q2,” Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s finance chief, said on the company’s earnings call.
In February, the Supreme Court invalidated Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, forcing the government to pay back duties to companies that imported goods into the U.S. that were hit by tariffs.
Major companies, including Apple, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot and General Motors, all said they would apply for refunds. Trump told CNBC in April he’d “remember” companies that don’t seek refunds, when asked whether companies, including Amazon, might be avoiding doing so because they’re worried about offending him.
Apple said Thursday its earnings per share were lifted 5%, or 11 cents, by tariff refunds in the third quarter.
Amazon previously hadn’t said whether it intended to apply for the refunds. In May, consumers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, arguing that they were owed refunds for paying tariff-inflated prices, and alleging the company wasn’t seeking refunds to “curry favor” with Trump.
Amazon, last April, landed in hot water with the White House after it was reported that the company planned to display the cost of Trump’s tariffs next to some products on its site. Trump personally called Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos to complain about the plan, NBC News reported.
On Thursday, Olsavsky said Amazon was issued a “limited” refund amount because it worked to order and preposition inventory in anticipation of the tariffs.
“Second, we are not the importer of record for the large majority of items sold in our store,” he said.
Many of Amazon’s third-party sellers who import their goods from overseas were forced to raise prices due to the levies, and have since applied to receive tariff refunds. Outside sellers account for more than 60% of goods sold on Amazon’s marketplace.
Olsavsky said some of the company’s tariff refunds will be returned to shoppers.
“We’ve identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we’ve passed specific import charges onto customers, and when we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them,” Olsavsky said. “Otherwise, like other large retailers, we’ll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers.”
