Retailers Are Selling Their Tariff Refund Claims at a Steep Discount for Cash Now
A secondary market has formed around a specific kind of IOU: the right to collect a tariff refund from the US government. Retailers including American Eagle Outfitters, The Children's Place, and Academy Sports & Outdoors have sold portions of their pending refund claims to third-party buyers, taking a fraction of the eventual payout in exchange for cash today.
The discounts are steep enough to tell you how much retailers value speed over full recovery right now.
What the Actual Deals Look Like
American Eagle Outfitters sold $68.9 million in refund claims for $18.6 million in cash, roughly 27 cents on the dollar, according to the company's own quarterly filing. That transaction happened in fiscal 2025, before the Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were unlawful. American Eagle has applied for approximately $190 million in total refunds, with an anticipated $140 million net cash benefit once everything is settled.
The Children's Place transferred $38.2 million in refund claims to Alnus Investors for roughly $25.7 million, closer to 67 cents on the dollar. Academy Sports & Outdoors sold a portion of its claims for approximately $10.5 million while retaining the rest of its refund rights.
Discount Rates Have Moved With the Legal Timeline
The pricing on these deals tracks the legal risk directly. Before the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, claims traded at 30 to 40 cents on the dollar, since buyers were pricing in real uncertainty about whether the government would ever have to pay at all. After the ruling, pricing moved closer to 60 cents, reflecting the fact that the legal question was settled even though the payment timeline wasn't.
These transactions aren't always clean, either. Oaktree Capital sued BJ's Wholesale Club in April over a failed $29 million claim purchase, a reminder that this market is new enough that the mechanics of who owes what, and when, haven't been fully worked out.
Why Retailers Are Taking Such a Steep Haircut
The core problem is speed. As of late July, the federal government had refunded roughly $100 billion of the $166 billion in tariffs collected under IEEPA, covering about 60% of total claims. CBP built a new system called CAPE specifically to process these refunds at scale, but the agency estimates valid refunds arrive 60 to 90 days after a claim is accepted, and CBP's own phased rollout intentionally covers only a subset of entries first.
For a healthy, well-capitalized retailer, waiting for the full refund is the obvious financial choice. Full recovery beats 27 cents on the dollar by a wide margin. But BDO Managing Principal David Wong framed the real tradeoff retailers are weighing: waiting longer for the full amount versus getting immediate access to less cash. For a retailer already under financial pressure, that calculation shifts fast.
American Eagle and The Children's Place both illustrate why. Both companies have been closing stores as part of broader restructuring. The Children's Place ended its most recent quarter with just $4.8 million in cash and $82.8 million in total liquidity, including borrowing capacity, while carrying $150 million in revolver borrowings and burning $53.8 million in operating cash during the quarter alone. For a company in that position, 67 cents today is worth more than a dollar six months from now, even though the math looks bad on paper.
The Legal Fight Isn't Actually Over
Even with the Supreme Court ruling settled, the broader tariff dispute keeps generating new fronts. Trump has attempted to reinstate tariff authority through the 1974 Trade Act, a move that has already triggered lawsuits from at least 25 state governments and numerous small business groups. That's a separate legal track from the IEEPA refund process, but it adds to the uncertainty retailers are weighing when they decide whether to sell a claim now or wait.
There's also a consumer-facing wrinkle developing alongside the retailer side of this story. Shein and Temu are facing lawsuits accusing them of unjust enrichment, on the theory that if a retailer collected tariff-inflated prices from customers and is now also collecting a government refund on the same goods, customers may be owed money too, regardless of what the retailer ultimately recovers from CBP. Similar complaints have been filed against Costco, Lululemon, and EssilorLuxottica. That “double recovery” theory adds a layer of legal exposure that sits on top of, and separate from, the refund timing issue driving the secondary market.
What This Means If You're Waiting on Your Own Refund
If you're a smaller importer or Amazon seller with your own IEEPA refund claim in process, the math behind these retailer deals is directly relevant, even if you're not a candidate for institutional claim buyers yourself. Filing a CAPE Declaration through the ACE Portal is not automatic, and CBP is placing the burden on importers to identify eligible entries and submit claims rather than issuing refunds proactively.
If your claim hasn't been filed yet, that's the first priority, since entries approaching final liquidation can lose refund eligibility entirely once CBP finalizes them, and protests filed within 180 days of liquidation are one of the few ways to keep a claim alive if you've missed an earlier window. The secondary market emerging around these claims tells you something useful even if you never plan to sell your own: buyers are actively pricing legal certainty and payment timing into real transactions right now, and 60 cents on the dollar for a legally settled claim is the market's honest assessment of how long CBP's payment process is actually taking, whatever the agency's official 60-to-90-day estimate says on paper.
