Business

Commentary: The feds are issuing tariff refunds to big companies, but you still shouldn’t expect a check

Published

4 weeks ago

August 6, 2026

Commentary: The feds are issuing tariff refunds to big companies, but you still shouldn’t expect a check

Apple, Amazon and other companies are collecting billions in tariff refunds, but their customers may not see the money.

Back in February, hours after the Supreme Court overturned most of President Trump’s tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joshed about whether consumers would get a piece of the refunds when the government refunded the illegal duties.

Responding to a question about that at an economics conference, Bessent stated — with “a condescending smirk,” I reported at the time — “I get a feeling the American people won’t see it.”

Now that the refunds have begun, with hundreds of millions of dollars — in some cases more than a billion — going out to major retailers and manufacturers, we can test Bessent’s conclusion against reality. As it turns out, and to no one’s real surprise, he had a point.

We are not the importer of record for the large majority of items….given suppliers typically handle imports and pay relevant tariffs.

— Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky explains why Amazon won’t be cutting tariff refund checks to most customers

Big companies have been exceedingly cagey about how they’re going to spend the refunded money. But sending checks to customers who paid higher prices because of the tariffs doesn’t seem to be in the offing. Some companies have implied that they might reduce prices, but they haven’t been very specific.

The closest any has come to clarity may be Walmart, whose top executives told investors in May that they had instituted price “rollbacks” on 7,200 items, 20% more than last year. Although they said they would devote the refund to “price investment,” which sounds like lowering prices. They said the wholesale prices on some incoming merchandise were lower than they were during the tariff period and therefore customers would pay less.

But they implied that the rollbacks reflected Walmart’s general practice of squeezing prices lower wherever they can. Anyway, Walmart announces price rollbacks on various items all the time.

Before examining what other companies are planning, here’s some background.

The duties at issue were the so-called “liberation day” tariffs Trump imposed across the globe in April last year. For months, Trump dangled the prospect of tariff refunds — actually, tariff “dividend” checks of $2,000 — in front of taxpayers. In effect, that would mean returning to taxpayers the money that his tariffs have cost them, since it’s black-letter economics that tariffs are a burden on domestic consumers, equivalent to a tax.

In his 6-3 ruling invalidating levies imposed on imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made clear that those tariffs were unconstitutional and illegal from their inception. He left no doubt that those who paid the tariffs are entitled to refunds, though he didn’t weigh in on how that should be done.

Numerous companies, including Costco, filed lawsuits or claims with the government demanding repayment. Several have announced or hinted at how much they’re getting. Apple, for example, indicated on its most recent quarterly earnings conference call that in the second quarter that ended June 31 it received more than $1.6 billion, or about half of the $3.3 billion it had previously marked as its tariff cost.

But Apple didn’t say that it would refund any portion of that sum directly to consumers, perhaps because it had never said the tariffs had prompted it to raise prices in the first place. Chief Executive Tim Cook said only that Apple plans to reinvest the refund “into the U.S.”

It’s worth noting that Apple recently raised prices on many products, but the company ascribed those increases to higher costs for memory chips, driven up by intense demand from AI firms. A company spokesman referred me to Cook’s comments on the conference call.

Amazon, which disclosed refunds of $600 million in the second quarter, says it might pass on refunds to specific customers in “a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we passed specific import charges on to customers,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told investment analysts on July 30. “When we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them.”

Olsavsky meant what he said when he used the term “limited.” On the July 30 earnings conference call, he said it wasn’t Amazon that paid the tariffs on most goods sold on its website.

“We are not the importer of record for the large majority of items…. given suppliers typically handle imports and pay relevant tariffs.” In other words, if you want a refund, talk to them.

As for merchandise that Amazon sold itself, Olsavsky said the company “did a lot of work forward buying and pre-positioning inventory to avoid tariff costs.” (He was trying to explain why Amazon’s tariff refund seemed so measly.) When I asked Amazon for more details on its tariff plans, its spokesperson simply referred me to Olsavsky’s remarks.

Other companies have said they’ll use tariff refunds to cover other inflationary effects, such as those due to the Iran war. They include PepsiCo and the spice merchant McCormick & Co., which both cited nontariff price increases as a target of the refunds.

Some retailers may have chosen to “eat” the tariffs without directly passing them on to customers, but it would not be surprising to learn that the charges got covered through some other corporate dollar-shifting to preserve profits — you may not have detected it at the kitchen table, but you can be sure it was there, somehow.

The invalidated tariffs cost American households $1,000 each last year and $900 each this year, the nonprofit Tax Foundation reckoned. But the components of that cost are varied and murky, making it hard to determine the best way to return the costs to consumers.

Some of the tariff effect has shown up in higher retail prices for foreign goods or domestic goods made wholly or partially from tariffed imported parts. Higher prices have a more generalized effect on economic growth, which can’t be attributed to specific products.

Trump’s disorganized tariff policies, including his on-again, off-again threats to use them to punish trade partners for actions that have nothing to do with trade, have prompted some companies to defer decisions on plant construction or other capital-intensive efforts. That has created economic headwinds, resulting in fewer jobs.

The Trump administration still seems to resent having to refund tariffs. Appearing on a webcast Tuesday hosted by right-wing figure Steve Bannon, Bessent tried to blame Democrats for pressure to refund the tariffs, even though the order came down from the Supreme Court.

“When the Democrats scream, ‘Oh, the refunds should go back to the American people,’ well, the American people had it,” Bessent said, scowling. “It was in the Treasury and it was paying down the debt.”

Is that so? The $168 billion Bessent cited as the government’s tariff take was a tax on consumers, as pretty much every qualified economist knows. It was charged to domestic importers, not to foreign exporters, and one way or another it was likely to show up at the kitchen table, often by higher prices or reduced availability of manufactured goods but sometimes in less obvious ways. I asked the Treasury Department to clarify, but it declined to comment.

According to Bessent, the tariff income was being used to “pay down the [federal] debt.” If he was implying that the money was specifically pigeonholed for an accelerated retirement of government securities, that’s untrue. The money was swept into the general fund, where it amounted to a relative pittance — one-fourteenth of the amount collected from personal income taxes in fiscal 2025.

Like any other government receipts, the tariff income was used to cover everything the government pays for, including healthcare and national security. Even if the tariff money were specifically directed at debt service, it wouldn’t have done much to defray the roughly $1 trillion in interest the government will incur this year.

By the way, what drives the national debt? To a significant extent, it’s the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017, most of which went to corporations and rich Americans. To follow Bessent’s reasoning, then, ordinary American consumers got charged billions of dollars to pay for a tax cut that put pennies in their pockets.

None of this should obscure that the confusion over tariff refunds stems from federal judges’ willingness to allow Trump to collect the duties even while their legality was a live issue. Nor should anyone think that the issue has gone away: Trump has responded to the Supreme Court’s decision by conjuring up new legal rationales for new tariffs.

One unchanging feature of this battle is Trump’s determination to use tariffs to satisfy his personal pique at one trade partner or another, on grounds that have nothing at all to do with what U.S. industries, if any, need protection from foreign competition and which countries have an unduly large trade surplus with the U.S.

Refunds or not, Trump’s tariff policies will be a continuing weight on the economy, and for most Americans, that weight won’t be lifted anytime soon.

Business

This L.A. shop was cute before cute was cool. It launched on TikTok, and things got ugly

Published

2 hours ago

September 4, 2026

Press Room

This L.A. shop was cute before cute was cool. It launched on TikTok, and things got ugly

The little L.A. shop was a destination for Hello Kitty fans for decades when it decided to dive into a massive new wave of e-commerce — peddling its products live on TikTok.

The first floor of the JapanLA store in Fairfax is full of stuffed toys. It houses shelf after shelf of cute Japanese characters such as My Melody, Totoro and Kuromi. Upstairs is the real moneymaker. Employees stand in front of phones, pitching the hottest new products of kawaii (cute in Japanese) culture.

While the upstairs business has brought in tens of thousands of new customers, it has also attracted trolls trying to shut JapanLA down. The haters have hacked the store’s website, harassed its hosts, spread rumors about its owner, and threatened to show up in force in front of its physical store.

JapanLA owner Jamie Rivadeneira says she has never seen cute consumers turn so ugly.

“I created JapanLA 20 years ago for adults who like cute stuff, so they can feel safe and feel like it’s OK to like toys and collect them,” she said. “To attack me is so opposite of what I stand for.”

It is a cautionary tale that points to the potential profit and pitfalls when small local businesses push back against the onslaught of e-commerce by using technology to reach a wider audience. It also demonstrates how the Labubu craze — in which people keep buying blind boxes of the same toys in hopes of getting a rare, expensive one — has turned some shops into casinos.

Rivadeneira was ahead of the curve when she opened a small toy shop in 2006 on a street off Melrose Avenue selling items featuring Hello Kitty and other Japanese characters.

From its early days, the store, called JapanLA, harnessed the internet to promote its products, using MySpace to connect with what was at the time a niche community: Los Angeles fans of kawaii culture. As it kawaii culture went mainstream, JapanLA grew into a 5,000-square-foot retail space on La Brea Avenue with more than 20 employees.

Owner and founder Jamie Rivadeneira holds a box of Sonny Angels at JapanLA.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Although its store continues to attract a steady flow of walk-in customers looking for the cutting edge of cute, JapanLA’s business has been turbo-charged in recent years by livestream shopping.

Livestream shopping, also called social commerce, is like the old cable shopping channels, but there are millions of shows, each serving a very specific niche, broadcasting live. The hosts interact with the shoppers watching. It started in Asia, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars in sales, and has been growing fast in the U.S.

JapanLA first dabbled in livestream shopping during the pandemic lockdown, when it had to close its store. It started on a platform called Popshoplive to sell Hello Kitty and other items, but sales didn’t skyrocket until it switched to TikTok Shop in 2023.

Kelly Parks broadcasts a JapanLA auction on TikTok.

Today, JapanLA’s TikTok account has nearly 400,000 followers and hosts seven-hour livestream shopping sessions six days a week. The shop’s 12 bubbly livestream hosts have turned into micro-celebrities. Their customers comment in the livestream’s chat, order hundreds of products during a session, and sometimes send tips and the occasional boba.

Uma Karmarkar, an associate professor at UC San Diego who studies consumer psychology, said livestreams are effective at getting consumers to spend more because they are engaging and temporary — meaning they tap into people’s fear of missing out on a rare opportunity.

When it comes to collectible blind boxes, the effect is heightened, she said.

“You’re adding to that element of scarcity that makes blind boxes so appealing in the first place,” Karmarkar said. “You don’t know what you’re getting, and it’s effectively like gambling.”

Various Smiski boxes lie in a box for clients at JapanLA.

JapanLA’s chat and sales exploded in the last two years, driven by demand for the cherubic figurines of a Japanese doll named Sonny Angels.

For certain consumers, it was the new Labubu: cute and collectible, sold in blind boxes, with certain types being rare and thus much more valuable.

Sonny Angels are three-inch plastic dolls that are generally naked, except for themed headgear and costumes.

JapanLA had unique access to the suddenly popular toys, as it had stocked Sonny Angels for 15 years. It originally had a niche following, but the fan base blew up in recent years. It was even at the center of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch featuring singer Dua Lipa.

JapanLA is still selling thousands of Sonny Angel dolls, but bids now tend to stay around $20.

JapanLA was auctioning the rarest Sonny Angels for hundreds of dollars, and that started bothering some fans of the fat little collectibles. In July, while taking bids for figurines from the Sonny Angels summer vacation-themed collection, one of the rare ones got a bid of more than $400. Some viewers used screenshots of the offer to accuse JapanLA of gouging.

Online detractors shared screenshots of the supposed $400 bid in a Sonny Angel collectors Facebook group with more than 30,000 members and launched a form-letter campaign, mass-emailing Dreams USA to try to get JapanLA’s retail license revoked.

“They’re trump supporters, what do you expect? Grifters,” one anonymous commenter said in the Facebook group.

“Report them for hoarding,” said another.

During livestream shopping sessions, JapanLA’s hosts received a flood of mean comments, including insults about their physical appearance and accusations that they were racist. Bad actors entered live auctions to place fake bids on items for up to $1,000 before letting the payments fail, she said.

A TikTok user made a dedicated account to “cancel” Japan. A flood of anonymous commenters spread rumors that JapanLA’s owner supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rivadeneira denies the claims. A hacking attack even shut down JapanLA’s website for a day.

One Discord user posted a threat to hand out hundreds of fliers at the store’s physical Sonny Angel launch event later that morning, falsely claiming that owners supported ICE to discourage would-be shoppers. The agitator never appeared, but the threat left the staff on edge throughout the day.

The company tried to report and block the trolls, but they kept popping up with new profiles. It hired a PR firm to manage the unfolding crisis. Rivadeneira said she even scrubbed her personal social media accounts of photos of her young daughter after trolls began attacking loved ones.

JapanLA turned to Dreams, the company behind Sonny Angels, for support. The two companies decided to change the way the figurines were auctioned to avoid the gouging narrative. Now they are auctioned before they are opened rather than after, so bidders don’t know what they are getting.

Jackie Bonheim, a spokesperson for Dreams USA, said that while the company received a flood of form-letter emails from angry Sonny Angels fans, the company cannot set a maximum retail price.

Ava B. showcases and unboxes a Sonny Angel during a TikTok live auction at JapanLA.

JapanLA is still selling thousands of Sonny Angel dolls, but bids now tend to stay around $20.

Some fans miss the days when they would know ahead of time if they were getting a really rare one.

Nicole Fani, 40, snapped up a rare “secret” unicorn Sonny Angel for more than $300 because she had to have it for her collection of hundreds of the figures.

“I’m not going to say for anybody else they should be spending that much,” she said. “It was worth it for me.”

Fani, a Brentwood artist, considers her collection an extension of her art and has embellished some with Swarovski crystals. Because she avoids buying secondhand Sonny Angels due to potential fakes, she would have probably spent more buying dozens of sealed blind boxes in the hopes of pulling the unicorn figure.

JapanLA‘s owner says her team is working every day to block and silence trolls. She‘s still reeling from how quickly her business went from a bumper batch of orders to battling for its life.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “All it takes is a few people to say bad things or say things about JapanLA, things about me, that aren’t true, for it to just go crazy.”

Business

Trump backs a federal film tax credit. What that could mean for Hollywood

Published

12 hours ago

September 4, 2026

Press Room

Trump backs a federal film tax credit. What that could mean for Hollywood

For years, Hollywood has talked about a federal film and television tax credit that could help the industry combat the growing number of productions fleeing overseas.

This week, the entertainment business got a glimmer of hope.

After more than a year of quiet work from California lawmakers, industry lobbyists and Hollywood unions to build a bipartisan coalition, President Trump endorsed the effort in a post on his social media website, providing a major boost for the issue.

If passed, a federal incentive is expected to help draw some productions back to the Golden State, industry experts and advocates said. Although it probably won’t immediately end Southern California’s production crisis — as many states now have established film hubs stocked with experienced crews and more generous tax breaks — an added federal credit certainly could help make California more competitive, they said.

“I will put our crews and our talent against any talent anywhere in the world,” said U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former producer who has been pushing for a national film tax credit. “If we have a level playing field upon which to shoot, where we are not much more expensive than other locations, productions will come back to Los Angeles.”

Trump’s post came after a meeting with actor Jon Voight, one of the president’s designated Hollywood ambassadors who has played a key role in lobbying for the film industry and advocating for a federal tax credit. Though Trump has had frosty relations with Hollywood, particularly since many heavyweights did not support his presidential campaign, the industry’s jobs push aligns with his focus on reshoring work, marking a rare moment of agreement.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said Wednesday that he has done “a lot of work” in the last week to get something done on federal tax incentives for the film and television industry.

Trump said he has spoken to streaming giant Netflix; Ari Emanuel, chief executive of TKO Group Holdings Inc.; and “many others,” and that he is hopeful there will be a bipartisan push to revive productions in Hollywood with “big subsidies and big credits.”

“We don’t give anything and we should,” Trump said, referring to proposed tax breaks for U.S. productions. He added that he wants legislation to “match” what other countries are offering.

Now, lawmakers must hammer out the details of that legislation.

The bill will have a Republican sponsor from a state known for film and TV production, but Friedman declined to name the person, saying she was waiting for Republicans to make their internal decision about that lead lawmaker.

The bill is likely to go through the House Committee on Ways and Means. Although exact provisions are still being negotiated, the expectation is that the credit will be stackable with states’ incentives — similar to how Canada’s tax credit works. A 20% federal tax credit on all labor costs — including for salaries of actors and crew members — is being discussed.

An earlier proposal from U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had called for a baseline labor-based tax credit of 15% to 20%, in addition to bonus add-ons for independent productions among others, a Schiff spokesperson said.

Schiff previously noted that 45% of all U.S. films and scripted TV shows were shot internationally last year, up from about 33% in 2022.

Having Schiff and Trump on the same side of this national tax credit is emblematic of the odd bedfellows the effort has engendered.

The Motion Picture Assn. studio lobbying group has released a statement backing the proposal, as have unions such as the Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

“I am in strong agreement with the President,” Schiff wrote Monday in a post on X. “Congress should immediately take up and pass a federal film tax incentive to bring back these good-paying jobs that we’ve lost to other countries.”

Production incentive experts say any national film tax credit will need to have a seamless process, one with minimal red tape.

One idea is to make the national production incentive an overlay that’s attached to states’ incentives, so the federal government doesn’t need a separate agency to vet the same criteria, which could slow the process, said Peter Marshall, managing principal of media insurance services at Epic, an insurance broker and consultant.

Parameters will also need to be clear, and the program easy to access, said Kathleen Thompson, vice president of tax incentives at payroll service Cast & Crew.

“There is an excitement and an energy and a hopefulness right now from the production community,” she said. “I’ve certainly gotten notes from clients, potential clients and industry colleagues that are very excited about the possibility of this passing and becoming a reality.”

Stacking a federal tax credit on top of the newly bolstered California production incentives could help give the state an edge when producers are pricing out location shoots.

“California is still the leader in production,” said Joe Chianese, senior vice president at Entertainment Partners, which tracks production incentives worldwide. “Producers would like to stay home if they can, but it boils down to the math.”

But even with the improvements to California’s film and TV tax credits, the state’s program still has limitations.

California has an annual funding cap of $750 million, designated application windows and allows the cost of actors’ salaries — a major driver of movie budgets — to be counted toward the tax breaks.

Beyond the program, the Golden State is just more expensive than other U.S. locales, and some filmmakers have criticized the red tape that makes shooting in L.A. more difficult.

“Can we be more competitive with a federal incentive? Absolutely,” Thompson said. “Can it completely turn the tide? I don’t know, but I hope so for our industry and our state.”

Industry stakeholders say they are hoping for quick movement on the issue, particularly since it probably will take more than a year after any tax credit is passed for producers to start making plans to move filming back to the U.S., due to lengthy production timelines for movies and TV shows.

“There is a ticking clock,” said Marshall of Epic. “If something isn’t done by the end of the year or in sight, there will be a further solidification of offshoring.”

For Peter Max-Muller, owner of the Ruby, a North Hollywood contemporary clothing rental business, the loss of film and TV shoots in L.A. is one of many threats his business faces, in addition to the use of AI production.

His sales typically mirror the production data from the nonprofit FilmLA, which recorded a 13% drop in shoot days in L.A. County in the second quarter compared with the same period a year earlier.

The goal of a federal incentive, Max-Muller said, “is that we get that runaway production back.”

It’s why Friedman said she is pushing to get the tax credit legislation done as soon as possible.

“The film industry is deep in the identity of Los Angeles,” she said. “And it’s worth saving.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

Business

El Segundo healthcare company to lay off more than 700 people

Published

23 hours ago

September 3, 2026

Press Room

El Segundo healthcare company to lay off more than 700 people

El Segundo-based caregiving company 24 Hour Home Care is laying off more than 700 people.

24 Hour Home Care hires around 30,000 caregivers in California for people with disabilities and veterans, and partners with regional facilities around the state and major Medi-Cal health plans.

A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter said the company is laying off 738 employees in September.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

The filing, dated Aug. 31, said the layoffs will happen on Sept. 15, sooner than the 60 days notice required by the state.

The company said it will pay caregivers through Oct. 23 for hours they would have worked, and cited the unanticipated ending of a “material third-party service arrangement” as the reason behind the cuts, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Two other healthcare companies in the Bay Area are also issuing nearly 200 layoffs.

Stanford Health Care is laying off 95 employees in Palo Alto, an Aug. 28 filing showed.

Hospital network John Muir Health in Contra Costa County is cutting 78 jobs across multiple locations including Walnut Creek, Concord and Pleasanton, according to government filings from Aug. 27.

These companies follow a steady stream of healthcare cuts this year after federal funding losses.

In early August, Dignity Health cut 139 jobs at hospitals in Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

On Aug. 19, Sharp HealthCare in San Diego announced plans to lay off 168 employees. Last September, it laid off 394 people.

In March, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health ended clinical services at seven of its public health clinic sites after losing $50 million in funding.

The same month, UC Irvine Health laid off 150 employees in a “strategic restructuring.”