Comment by aiauthoritydev

It is more complicated than that.

Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits.

> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition.

Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.