标签： North America

More than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a sweeping set of Trump-era tariffs, the current Trump administration has kicked off what historians and trade analysts describe as the largest tariff repayment initiative in U.S. history. Eligible importing companies can now submit claims online to recover the billions in duties they paid, plus accumulated interest, under the administration’s controversial “Liberation Day” tariffs.

The legal path for refunds cleared in March, when the U.S. Court of International Trade ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to return the full $160 billion (around £121 billion) collected from importers under the tariffs, which were imposed using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The court’s ruling puts roughly 330,000 registered importers in line to potentially claw back at least a portion of the funds they paid.

In a March ruling, Judge Richard Eaton emphasized that “All importers of record whose entries were subject to IEEPA duties are entitled to the benefit” from the Supreme Court’s February decision. When the official online claims portal, branded the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (Cape), went live earlier this month, more than 56,000 importers had already completed their applications within the first week, submitting claims totaling $127 billion, according to early CBP data.

CBP officials designed the Cape platform to streamline the refund process, allowing importers to submit a single bulk claim for all eligible duties rather than filing separate requests for each individual imported shipment. Approved claimants can expect to receive their full refund plus applicable interest within 60 to 90 days of approval, a CBP spokesperson confirmed.

But the structure of the program has sparked widespread frustration, as ordinary consumers who bore the indirect cost of the tariffs through higher retail prices are excluded from direct compensation. The tariffs pushed up prices on a huge range of imported goods, from raw materials used by small businesses to finished consumer products, but only registered importing companies are eligible to file claims. While consumers could theoretically see indirect benefits if companies choose to pass recovered funds back to shoppers through lower prices, few firms have announced plans to do so, leaving millions of affected Americans with no path to relief.

In response to the exclusion, hundreds of consumers have launched class-action lawsuits against major retailers and brands, arguing that any refunds businesses receive should be passed through to the customers that ultimately paid the tariff costs. Federal suits have already been filed against EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban, global delivery firm FedEx, and wholesale retail giant Costco in multiple U.S. district courts. Costco is an outlier among major companies: chief executive Ron Vachris has confirmed the retailer plans to pass any tariff refunds back to consumers “through lower prices and better values.”

For small business owners who absorbed higher supply costs, the exclusion is a particularly bitter blow. Sue Johnson, a small-batch lamp designer based in the Midwest, told the BBC that her key material supplier doubled prices immediately after the tariffs went into effect, cutting her profit margins dramatically. “Maybe [the importers] will get repaid, but I have no hope they’re going to refund me,” Johnson said, adding that she expects no relief from the current refund program.

The issue of consumer compensation is further complicated by the uneven impact of tariffs on business pricing. Many importers only partially passed tariff costs through to consumers to stay competitive, meaning they absorbed a portion of the cost themselves. Tariffs also triggered secondary, hard-to-quantify costs for businesses, from higher debt loads taken on to cover upfront duty payments to lost sales from reduced consumer demand at higher price points.

Top Trump administration officials have openly acknowledged that consumers are not expected to see direct benefits from the program. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer encouraged successful claimants last month to allocate any unexpected “windfall” refunds to worker bonuses rather than passing the money to consumers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed that framing in February, saying “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it.”

For decades, Canada’s deep integrated economic and trade relationship with the United States has been widely framed as one of the country’s greatest economic assets, driving cross-border investment, job growth, and market access for Canadian manufacturers and resource exporters alike. But that long-held consensus is shifting dramatically, according to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is calling for urgent course correction after sweeping changes to U.S. trade policy transformed the once-advantageous partnership into a critical vulnerability for Canada’s economic future.

In recent remarks, Carney argued that evolving trade priorities out of Washington have eroded the stability that once made close bilateral ties a boon for Canadian economic growth. What once allowed Canadian businesses to reliably access the world’s largest single consumer market has now become a source of systemic risk, he said, leaving Canada overly exposed to sudden shifts in U.S. trade rules, tariff policy changes, and politically driven trade disputes that can disrupt domestic economic activity with little warning.

Carney’s comments mark a notable shift in Canadian discourse around bilateral relations, opening a new conversation about the need for Canada to diversify its trade partnerships, reduce its overreliance on the U.S. market, and strengthen domestic economic resilience to insulate the country from future trade policy changes originating south of the border. The prime minister framed the push for correction as a pragmatic response to a changed global trade landscape, rather than a rupture in bilateral relations, noting that adapting to Washington’s new policy direction is a necessary step to protect Canada’s long-term economic sovereignty and prosperity.

An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has uncovered a striking pattern: large, unexplained spikes in trading activity occurred on financial markets in the immediate lead-up to key public announcements from the United States president related to the conflict with Iran. The findings have reignited long-simmering questions about whether individuals with access to non-public intelligence about escalating tensions and potential military action exploited their insider advantage to generate millions of dollars in illegal profits.

Federal U.S. prosecutors have announced the arrest of an Iranian national and U.S. lawful permanent resident on charges that she ran an illicit arms trafficking network brokering Iranian weapons sales to Sudan’s national military, a scheme that violated sweeping American sanctions imposed on Tehran.

Forty-four-year-old Shamim Mafi was taken into custody by law enforcement officials at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, as she prepared to board an outbound flight to Turkey, according to a public statement posted to X by Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. Court documents unsealed following the arrest detail accusations that Mafi coordinated multiple large-scale arms deals directly with Sudan’s Ministry of Defense, moving military hardware produced by Iranian manufacturers into the war-torn Northeast African nation.

The most high-value transaction cited in filings is a $70 million (€60 million / £52 million) contract for unmanned aerial drones, a deal for which Mafi is alleged to have arranged travel for a Sudanese official delegation to Iran, collected more than €6 million in payments from the Sudanese side, issued official payment receipts, and coordinated logistics between Iranian producers and Sudanese military buyers. Court records also add that Mafi formally submitted a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to broker a separate agreement for 55,000 bomb fuses, alongside additional deals for conventional bombs and millions of rounds of small-arms ammunition.

To hide the transactions from U.S. regulators, prosecutors say Mafi deliberately structured deals to bypass oversight, repeatedly using unregulated informal currency exchange entities across multiple transactions in a calculated effort to evade American sanctions that ban any U.S.-based person or resident from engaging in unauthorised commercial activity involving Iranian goods or services. Essayli’s public announcement included accompanying images: one shows a woman believed to be Mafi detained by airport security personnel, while others show a military drone on an airfield tarmac and stacks of bundled cash linked to the alleged scheme.

Mafi, who became a U.S. lawful permanent resident in 2016, has not yet issued any public statement responding to the charges against her. She is scheduled to make her first court appearance for the case on Monday, and if convicted on all counts, she faces a maximum possible prison sentence of 20 years behind bars.

The allegations come against the backdrop of a devastating three-year civil war in Sudan, which has pitted the country’s formal national army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The United Nations has labeled the conflict the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, with tens of thousands of civilians and combatants killed, more than 7 million people internally displaced or refuged across neighboring borders, and widespread famine and collapse of basic public services across large swathes of the country.

For months, global human rights watchdogs have documented widespread foreign arms flows to both warring parties, which international observers say have prolonged and intensified the violence. Amnesty International previously published research confirming that weapons manufactured in countries including China, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen have been recovered from battlefields in Sudan. Tehran has repeatedly been accused of supplying military support including weapons to Sudan’s army, allegations that Sudanese government officials have repeatedly denied in past statements.