Major CA Retailers To Use Tariff Refunds To Lower Prices: See Details

Consumers in California may soon see some relief at the cash register as major retailers use tariff refunds to cut prices or absorb rising freight and fuel costs.

Walmart, Burlington Stores and Tractor Supply are among the companies putting refunds toward lower prices. E.l.f. Beauty is also cutting prices on some cosmetics after testing showed that shoppers responded quickly to a less expensive product.

The savings won’t arrive as checks or credits tied to what individual shoppers paid. Most retailers either absorbed the tariffs or folded them into prices, making it all but impossible to calculate how much any one customer should receive.

Instead, the companies are deciding whether to use the refunds to cut prices, blunt other cost increases, strengthen profits or return money to shareholders.

The refunds followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give President Donald Trump authority to impose the sweeping tariffs he enacted in 2025.

More than $160 billion has since been returned to importers.

In limited cases, consumers who paid tariffs directly on packages ordered from overseas are receiving actual refunds. FedEx, UPS and DHL have said they are returning government reimbursements to customers whose tariffs were paid through the shippers, Patch previously reported.

Eligible shipping refunds are generally being returned automatically to the credit card or bank account used for the original payment.

Walmart Refunds Total $2.9B

Walmart, which has 302 stores in California, received nearly $2.9 billion in refunds from tariffs, according to the company’s latest earnings report.

The retailer said it prioritized putting that money into prices and offered more than 11,000 “rollbacks” during its fiscal second quarter. The reductions included ground beef and other groceries as well as general merchandise.

Walmart did not provide a complete list of the affected products or say how much of each reduction came from the tariff refunds. Shoppers should begin feeling more of the effect during the company’s current fiscal quarter, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said.

Burlington Promises Better Deals

Burlington Stores, which has 145 locations in California, received $55 million in tariff refunds and plans to put all of it into lower prices during the second half of its fiscal year, the company said in reporting its second-quarter results.

Chief Executive Michael O’Sullivan said the money would be used to improve the deals the off-price retailer offers shoppers. The company did not identify specific products or say how large the reductions would be.

Dollar Tree Reinvests In Stores

Dollar Tree, which has 825 stores in California, received about $383 million in tariff refunds, giving the discount chain room to invest in targeted price cuts, marketing and store improvements.

The refunds helped lift second-quarter earnings and cushion the cost of those investments, though the company warned they will weigh on profits in the current quarter, The Wall Street Journal reported

“We are focusing those dollars on targeted pricing strategies, marketing, store operations and store conditions — areas that can benefit our customers today while strengthening the business for the long-term,” Chief Executive Mike Creedon said on an earnings call with analysts.

Beauty And Farm-Supply Prices

Customers of e.l.f. Beauty can also expect lower prices. The company, whose products are sold in major retail stores and online, received about $50 million in tariff refunds and permanently lowered prices on roughly 10 percent of its product catalog after running pricing tests, Quartz reported.

In one test, e.l.f. reduced the price of Halo Glow Skin Tint by $4. Unit sales jumped nearly 40 percent, persuading the company that shoppers were willing to buy more when prices came down.

Tractor Supply, which has 98 stores in California, said it is using its refunds to help offset higher freight and fuel costs rather than passing all of those increases along to customers. Prices have been lowered on some products, including pine shavings and premium pet food, though the retailer has not disclosed the value of its refunds.

Not Every Retailer Cuts Prices

There is no requirement that companies pass tariff refunds along to shoppers.

Home Depot received $730 million in tariff refunds, but said in its most recent earnings report that the money will help offset unplanned increases in fuel, energy and other product costs rather than finance broad price cuts. The company expects those higher costs to consume the benefit of the refunds over the full year, according to its second-quarter earnings report

Lowe’s received about $80 million and chose to direct the money toward shareholder returns rather than price reductions, Chief Executive Marvin Ellison told CNBC. Kohl’s put $100 million into its gross margin, a measure of profitability, and planned to use the rest to buy more inventory.

Target recorded $994 million in tariff-refund benefits in its second quarter, nearly doubling operating income from a year earlier. The retailer said it had lowered prices on more than 10,000 frequently purchased items over the past year but did not directly attribute those reductions to the refunds, according to its earnings report.