Amazon gets $600M, plans some customer refunds

Amazon said during a Thursday earnings call that it received $600 million in tariff refunds in its second financial quarter and will automatically refund some affected customers in limited cases, The Hill reported.

Brian Olsavsky, chief financial officer of Amazon.com, Inc., said the company is “participating in the tariff refund process.” He said Amazon worked on the front end to avoid tariff costs and is “not the importer of record for the large majority of items sold in our store.”

“In cases where we did see an increase in cost due to tariffs, we largely absorbed these costs rather than pass them on to customers,” Olsavsky said on the call. He said Amazon had “identified a limited set of circumstances” in which customers were affected by the higher costs.

“When we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them,” Olsavsky said.

The Hill reported that Amazon’s refunds follow a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that many Trump administration tariffs were illegal. The article said the court’s 6-3 ruling in February struck down the bulk of Trump’s tariffs, prompting the U.S. government to begin refunding billions of dollars in import taxes to affected companies.

The Hill said Trump’s tariffs had become a cornerstone of his administration’s economic bargaining strategy. The Supreme Court’s decision did not specify how the refund process should work, according to the report.