US Tariff Revenue Falls to $172 Billion in FY2026 as IEEPA Refunds Turn Customs Receipts Negative for Three Months

For three months in 2026, the US government collected less in customs duties than it paid back. Net customs receipts were minus $0.04 billion in May, minus $25.56 billion in June and minus $8.55 billion in July, according to Treasury’s monthly statements. In June alone, refunds reached $49.18 billion.

The refunds followed the Supreme Court’s ruling in February that the President couldn’t impose tariffs under the emergency powers law. Importers had paid about $166 billion under those tariffs. By September, Customs and Border Protection had certified about $122 billion in refunds, including interest.

The fiscal year

The Congressional Budget Office’s monthly review, published on 8 October, puts fiscal 2026 customs duties at about $172 billion. That’s $22 billion, or 11%, less than fiscal 2025’s $195 billion, and far below what the February budget outlook expected. CBO says about $130 billion in emergency-tariff refunds went out during fiscal 2026. It puts the year’s overall deficit at about $1.99 trillion.

The peak came early. In October 2025, at the height of the emergency tariffs, net customs receipts were $31.35 billion in a single month. Fiscal 2026 receipts peaked at $188.6 billion year-to-date at the end of April, before the refunds. They turned positive again in August, at $12.84 billion net.

For scale: fiscal 2024 customs revenue was $77 billion. Even after refunds, tariffs are raising more than twice what they did before 2025.

What replaced the emergency tariffs

The administration rebuilt its tariffs on other laws. A temporary 10% global tariff under Section 122 ran from February to July. Since 24 July, Section 301 tariffs of 10% to 12.5% apply to goods from 60 economies. Section 232 national security tariffs, on steel, aluminium, copper, autos, lumber, trucks, some advanced chips and patented drugs, were never affected by the ruling and keep expanding.

Neither Treasury nor CBO breaks out revenue by legal authority, so it’s not possible to say exactly how much each law brings in.

The ten-year picture

In August CBO updated its estimates for the tariffs in place at the end of July. It found deficits over 2027 to 2036 would be $0.9 trillion larger than in its February baseline, mostly because the emergency tariff revenue was gone. It put the effective tariff rate at about 10%, down from about 15% in November 2025.

That loss lands on top of a budget already running deficits near $2 trillion a year. Tariff revenue had been counted on, informally, to offset part of the cost of the 2025 tax law. The court ruling took a large piece of that away, and the replacement tariffs bring in less.

What to watch

Refunds aren’t finished. A third phase of the refund process, for entries that were finally settled, opened on 6 October. The official September Treasury statement, due later this month, will close the books on fiscal 2026. And several new Section 232 tariffs take effect in the coming months, including on polysilicon in December, which will show whether sector tariffs can rebuild the revenue the emergency tariffs once raised.