FedEx, UPS and DHL Start Refunding Billions in Tariffs

What Happened This Week

Starting around August 10, 2026, FedEx began issuing the first wave of tariff refunds to customers, drawing from roughly $800 million the carrier collected on their behalf under tariffs that no longer exist. UPS and DHL are running similar payouts. This is part of a much bigger reversal: after the Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) exceeded the administration’s authority, U.S. Customs and Border Protection was ordered to unwind more than $166 billion in duties collected across over 53 million shipment entries. As of the end of July, CBP had already paid out $100 billion of that total.

Why This Money Is Coming Back

For about ten months, from spring 2025 through February 2026, many goods entering the United States were hit with additional IEEPA duties on top of ordinary tariffs. Carriers like FedEx, UPS and DHL often act as the “importer of record” for packages moving through their networks, meaning they paid the duty to CBP upfront and then billed it to whoever received the shipment. When the Supreme Court invalidated the legal basis for those tariffs, it triggered one of the largest customs refund efforts in U.S. history. CBP built a new claims system, called CAPE, to process it, and the carriers are now working through their own backlogs of eligible shipments.

Who’s Actually Getting Money Back

UPS says refunds are being issued automatically to whoever originally paid the customs bill, with no action required. FedEx opened a verification portal in mid-July where customers can confirm their shipment details and check whether a refund is owed; customers who opt into limited data sharing are being prioritized in this first disbursement wave. DHL has said it will pass along whatever CBP refunds it receives to the customers who paid the original duty. In all three cases, it’s the party who was billed for the duty — not necessarily the end recipient — who gets paid.

What This Means If You Ship or Resell Internationally

If every package you’ve ever received came from a U.S. retailer shipping domestically, this refund wave likely doesn’t touch you — goods bought and shipped within the U.S. never went through this tariff regime in the first place. But if part of your sourcing mix includes suppliers overseas — a common pattern among resellers who consolidate inventory before forwarding it abroad — and a shipment from that supplier arrived in the U.S. via FedEx, UPS or DHL sometime between last spring and this February, there’s a real chance a duty bill was attached to it. That’s the shipment worth digging up an old invoice for.

It’s also a useful reminder of why so many Viabox members build their sourcing around U.S. retailers in the first place: purchases made from domestic stores and forwarded from our Portland warehouse were never subject to these import tariffs, since the goods were already inside the country. But for the portion of your business that does route through overseas suppliers, this refund window is money already sitting with the carrier — it just needs to be claimed.

What to Do Right Now

• Pull invoices or shipment records for anything imported into the U.S. between April 2025 and February 2026 where you or a supplier paid a customs duty through FedEx, UPS or DHL.
• Check FedEx’s refund verification portal directly if FedEx handled the entry — don’t wait for an email.
• For UPS shipments, confirm the payment method or account on file is current, since refunds route there automatically.
• Keep documentation on hand; claims processing is running in phases over 60–90 days, and having records ready speeds things up if a carrier asks for verification.

None of this affects newer duty regimes — like the EU’s parcel-level charges or Section 301 tariffs on specific goods — which remain separate and unaffected by this ruling. But if you’ve been paying duties on inbound freight over the past year, it’s worth ten minutes to check whether some of that money is already on its way back to you.