Bessent To Americans: About Those Tariff Refunds — Bless Your Heart
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...