Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an appearance on this Sunday's State of the Union on CNN and was asked repeatedly by host Dana Bash whether or not the administration was going to refund Trump's emergency tariffs that the Supreme Court just ruled were illegal, and Bessent basically said they're going to tie this up in the courts again for as long as possible.
BASH: I do want to start with the big question. Will you refund the roughly $134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?
BESSENT: Well, Dana, that's not the big question. Let's just level set here. What the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president's authority under the IEEPA tariffs.
We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning -- Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs. And Dana, when you say it's a big question, that's bad framing, because the Supreme Court didn't even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court. And we will follow what they say, but that could be weeks or months when we hear them. So the Supreme Court did not address refunds.
BASH: Sure, they didn't address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to you, which is why...
BESSENT: No, no, no, no, Dana. It is not up to me.
BASH: Not you...
BESSENT: It is not up to the administration. It is up to the lower court. Let's just be clear on that.
BASH: Okay. Well, the Justice Department told a federal appeals court in this very case last year, if tariffs imposed on plaintiffs during these appeals are ultimately held unlawful, then the government will issue refunds to plaintiffs.
BESSENT: Again, I'm not going to get out ahead of the court. We will follow the court's direction, but as I said, that could be weeks or months away. That decision was not rendered on Friday.
BASH: What do you think? You're the Treasury Secretary. What do you think should happen? In the past you have said it is possible.
BESSENT: Again, I want to point to what we're doing. The President, the administration remains undeterred in re-shoring American factories and getting rid of these massive trade imbalances.
That's the big story here, is that we are immediately gonna go to section 122 tariffs and that the revenue for the US Treasury for 2026, the projections are unchanged.
BASH: Okay, I'm gonna ask about the new tariffs that the president talked about over the weekend. But before we move off of this, I know in the past, before the Supreme Court went with its ruling, you said any tariff refund would be corporate welfare and would likely not get passed on to the American consumers.
What about the countless small business owners in America, many of whom have spoken with CNN, who say they're bearing the cost and have been bearing the cost of tariffs?
BESSENT: Again, I'm not going to get out ahead of the court. We don't know what arrangements were made. We don't know what foreign, the foreign suppliers, whether they discounted the what's happened. So the let's just focus on the news on Friday and then I'll come back after the lower court rules.
BASH: Yeah, as a Treasury Secretary, it's hard to believe that you don't know, have an opinion or know where these revenues, you know, over a hundred billion dollars are going to go or have an opinion on where they should go.
BESSENT: Again, I had an opinion and the court did not agree with my opinion. So Dana, I'm going to wait for the lower court opinion.
He could have just said "bless your heart" and we'd have gotten the message. They stole our money and now they're not giving it back.
