Dame repays tariff surcharge to customers

Dame Products is refunding customers who paid its 2025 “Trump tariff surcharge,” and CEO Alexandra Fine said the company is still trying to recover its own money from U.S. Customs. (modernretail.co) (finance.yahoo.com) Fine said Dame added the surcharge as a visible line item at checkout in April 2025, when Trump-era tariffs tied to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act raised the company’s import costs. (modernretail.co) (cbsnews.com) The fee was $5 per order on direct-to-consumer purchases, ran from April through the end of May 2025, and appeared on roughly 2,000 surcharge line items. (modernretail.co) Fine told Modern Retail the company is preparing to return about $10,000 to customers, with refunds processed automatically within 15 business days. (modernretail.co) The customer repayments followed court decisions that invalidated many tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. CBS News reported the Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that those emergency tariffs were illegal. (cbsnews.com) (cnbc.com) That ruling left a separate question: how importers would actually get repaid. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it built a CAPE refund function inside its Automated Commercial Environment system to process valid IEEPA duty claims. (cbp.gov) The first phase of that portal went live on April 20, 2026, according to Customs and outside trade advisers tracking the process. (cbp.gov) (rsmus.com) Fine said Dame paid about $100,000 in tariffs overall, including roughly $70,000 tied to IEEPA duties that could be eligible for refunds. (modernretail.co) (cbsnews.com) The surcharge never fully covered those higher costs, and Fine said the fee also hurt conversion on Dame’s website. (modernretail.co) Other companies are taking a similar position on pass-through refunds. FedEx told Business Insider it intends to return tariff refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally paid those charges if the government issues them. (africa.businessinsider.com) For now, Dame has already sent money back to shoppers and is waiting on the government process to catch up. (finance.yahoo.com)