Trump Gives Back Billions in Tariff Reimbursements—With More to Come

Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs have come back to bite him.

In a court filing submitted in the U.S. Court of International Trade Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection official Brandon Lord wrote that as of July 31, the government had allocated approximately $100 billion for companies that had to pay higher import fees due to the president’s illegal levies.

The memo also noted that, as of July 31, the CBP entity created to track and deliver tariff refunds had received more than 252,000 refund declarations for 25.1 million import entries.

While the refund figure is steep, it still doesn’t cover everything the Trump administration owes. In another legal filing, Lord revealed that the government generated roughly $166 billion from the tariffs. That would mean the government is currently repaying 60 percent of what it owes, and that there are still significantly more funds to be doled out.

The filing was submitted in response to a class action lawsuit brought by a coalition of small businesses that suffered under Trump’s tariff plans. Collectively, they claim that there are still obstacles to obtaining the refunds they’re legally owed through CBP.

Trump’s tariffs were one of his major second term policy points. But the ultraconservative Supreme Court ruled in February that his tariff plan—which was introduced under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—was beyond the power of his office, effectively dismantling the president’s foreign and economic agendas in one fell swoop.

Yet the president was still trying to spin his costly, unconstitutional tolls as a win during an interview with Fox News Tuesday.

“Tariffs have been incredible. We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars,” he told the network. “Supreme Court gave us a little shot, but we’re allowed to do it in a different manner.”

But Trump’s other unconventional tariff attempts are also facing legal challenges. Last month, Trump was sued mere hours after he attempted to invoke new duties under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which some economic law scholars told CNBC would likely not pass muster with the courts since the president is “using the statute in a fundamentally different way.”

One of Elon Musk’s wayward rockets seems to have crashed into the moon, but the Trump administration isn’t worried about it.

Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon Wednesday morning, reportedly with the impact of three tons of TNT. The crash sent up a big cloud of dust and left a new crater on the moon’s surface, The Independent reports. Images of the impact may take days to appear from ground telescopes and satellites orbiting the moon. The SpaceX rocket is from a Falcon 9 spacecraft that was carrying a lunar lander to the Moon last January.

When asked about the explosion on Fox News, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was dismissive, crediting SpaceX with recovering 600 of its rockets in other cases, and said this explosion wasn’t a big deal in terms of space trash.

“It’s very infrequent to have things like the Falcon 9 second stage crash into the moon,” Isaacman said. “It’s not a big deal right now, the moon has clearly seen better days.”

Isaacman then pivoted into how once reusable rockets are ready, they would be landing on the moon to help “contribute to the city block you’re trying to build on the surface.”

Isaacman has a close business relationship with Musk, having financed SpaceX missions in the past, and wants to carry out Musk and President Trump’s dreams of building a base on the moon. If there were major problems with spacecraft crashing into the moon, he’s not likely to hurt his own position, or make Musk look bad, by telling the public in a news interview.

Space debris is a growing problem from increased rocket launches, and could become a major issue if any important satellites are damaged. If more of Musk’s SpaceX rockets veer out of control, his moon base plans could hit a major snag.

President Trump on Wednesday filed an emergency motion to stop the British Broadcasting Corporation from gaining broad access to intimate details about his finances.

The emergency stay is the latest development in how Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, triggered by a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance,” is backfiring. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett allowed the BBC to move forward with gaining access to the financial information of at least 400 business entities owned by Trump’s family trust. Lett set a Thursday deadline for the BBC to get hold of his financial records.

Now Trump is scrambling to stop what he started from blowing up in his face.

“The BBC’s motive could not be more transparent—to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit, as well as the benefit of President Trump’s other political opponents,” the deposition read. “The moment those records reach the BBC, the injury is complete and irreversible.” His lawyers also accused the BBC of having “clearly political motivations.”

Trump’s legal team is asking Lett to allow Trump to go back and change the language of the suit, so that his lucrative business dealings as president are not subject to public scrutiny.

The BBC has yet to respond.

It seems obvious that Trump bit off more than even he can chew here. If his plea to change the discovery parameters fails, we may see him drop the lawsuit entirely.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a chilling message to U.S. attorneys across the country at a press conference Wednesday.

A reporter asked Blanche if he stood by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the four cases of vandalism over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and what kind of message it would send if President Trump fired Pirro because she determined there wasn’t enough evidence to charge those people.

“Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a United States attorney, it turns out he’s allowed to do that, because he’s the president of the United States,” Blanche replied. “And by the way, if the president wanted—if President Trump wanted to fire anybody, right, and within his administration, I mean, he understands he has the power to do that. So when he makes a decision about whether to fire a U.S. attorney or anybody else, that’s his.”

That’s not a ringing endorsement of Pirro, and it shows that Blanche, like Trump, doesn’t believe in federal prosecutors’ independence. If a U.S. attorney is given an order by Trump, they must fall in line regardless of the evidence, Blanche effectively said.

Pirro is either on the verge of being fired, or is on very thin ice after she refused to prosecute the Reflecting Pool vandalism cases. She reportedly got into a shouting match with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Trump in the White House Tuesday over the matter, and the president still insists that the pool was vandalized, citing nonexistent witnesses and video evidence. Every other U.S. attorney around the country is watching what happens to Pirro, because the message from Trump and Blanche is to follow orders, whether they make legal sense or not. Otherwise, you’re fired.

Temporary Protected Status has officially ended for Haitians, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of being deported—even though the United States still designates Haiti with a level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes of Washington, D.C. reversed her initial decision and ruled that TPS was “no longer in effect” for Haitians, following a Supreme Court ruling in June.

The final step puts more than 300,000 Haitians in this country at risk of deportation. Meanwhile, the U.S. tells its citizens not to travel to Haiti due to “the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care”—the same reasons thousands of Haitians were afforded TPS in the first place.

Haitians have been a constant target of racist animosity from the Trump administration, most notably from Trump himself, who claimed on the campaign trail that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

“The way this group has been specifically targeted is symbolic of the administration’s efforts to criminalize immigrants of color,” Advocates for Basic Legal Equality senior attorney Katie Kersh told The Washington Post.

Aside from being forced back into a dangerous and unstable environment, about 200,000 potential deportees have jobs here, mostly in health care and warehouse jobs—leaving local economies in limbo, as business owners have already begun searching elsewhere for employees.

“This is an embarrassment for the United States of America,” Senator Chris Murphy said on Monday. “There is no safe place to return for TPS holders from places like Haiti and Yemen and Venezuela and Syria. In fact, in those places I just mentioned, the situation is not stabilizing, getting better, it is getting worse.”