The Record Tariff Year That Netted Less

$125.2 billion: refunds paid out of the US customs line in the first eleven months of fiscal 2026. The whole of fiscal 2025 produced $7.5 billion (US Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, data through August 2026).

Two-panel bar chart headed 'A record tariff haul, refunded'. Left panel: US customs duties by fiscal year in billions of dollars, three pairs of bars. FY2024 gross 83.8 beside net 77.0; FY2025 gross 202.4 beside net 194.9; FY2026 gross 292.5 beside net 167.3, so the gross bar rises each year while the FY2026 net bar is visibly shorter than the FY2025 net bar. Right panel: monthly net customs receipts from October 2025 to August 2026, bars descending from 31.4 and then falling below the zero line in May, June and July, with June the deepest at minus 25.6, before returning above zero at 12.84 in August.

The record is real

Treasury’s monthly series shows $292.5 billion of customs duties collected between October 2025 and August 2026, against $202.4 billion in all of fiscal 2025. The US budget year runs 1 October to 30 September. Daily cash statements, which already include September, put fiscal 2026 deposits of customs duties, taxes and fees at $332.6 billion, up from $215.2 billion and $95.7 billion in the two years before (Daily Treasury Statement, 30 September 2026).

Those are two different Treasury publications on two different bases, and they do not reconcile exactly. The monthly series is used for every comparison below, because it publishes refunds as their own line.

Net of refunds, it collected less

Customs receipts after refunds came to $167.3 billion through August: already $27.6 billion below the $194.9 billion booked in the whole of fiscal 2025, with a month still unpublished. The comparison is eleven months against twelve, which makes the shortfall a conservative one.

Two courts, not one

On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act gives the President no power to impose tariffs.

The refunds came from a second court. In March the Court of International Trade ordered Customs and Border Protection to liquidate and reliquidate entries without those duties, in Atmus Filtration, Inc. v. United States. That order, not the Supreme Court’s, is what moved the money, which is why ten weeks separate the ruling from the first large repayment.

Three months in the red

$49.2 billion went out in June 2026 alone, against $23.6 billion collected, leaving the customs line at minus $25.6 billion. The largest single refund month of fiscal 2025 was $0.8 billion.

May, June and July are the only negative months in the series, which begins in March 2015. That is the bound on the claim: 138 monthly observations, not the whole history of the republic. Customs revenue was a far larger share of federal income in the nineteenth century than anything in this series.

Most of the decline predates the ruling

Gross collections peaked at $33.1 billion in October 2025 and were down to $27.2 billion by February 2026, before any refund order existed. The slide from there to $23.4 billion in August is the part the ruling touches. A 29% fall from peak to trough, but not one cause, and this data cannot separate them.