Dive Brief:

• Costco Wholesale is beginning to recoup some of the money it paid for duties on goods imposed by the Trump Administration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that were later deemed unlawful, while continuing to fight a proposed class action filed by a customer seeking to recoup those tariff refunds, according to a court filings earlier this month.
• The Issaquah, Washington-based warehouse club retailer said it had received about one-third of the refunds it is entitled to and has started to return the “recovered value” to its customers via lower prices on some products, according to an Aug. 5 filing. 
• But attorneys for Costco said the refunds did not change the fact that plaintiff’s claims are not “ripe” and that he lacks standing in the case. “Plaintiff’s alleged injury remains hypothetical unless and until Costco receives all of the relevant refunds and determines how to handle those refunds,” Costco stated in the filing. “That is particularly true because plaintiff’s complaint does not identify the specific products he purchased that were allegedly affected by the tariff-related price increases.”

Dive Insight:

The proposed class action lawsuit against Costco was filed in March by Matthew Stockov, an Illinois customer. The original complaint rejected Costco’s stated commitment to return any potential refunds through lower pricing, asserting that reimbursing future shoppers would not make the specific shoppers who paid higher prices in the past whole.

Now, with Costco beginning to recoup IEEPA-related tariff money from the government, Stockov’s attorneys pointed out in an Aug. 12 filing that one of Costco’s primary arguments against refunding the money to customers —  that it hadn’t received any tariff refunds —  had “evaporated” while the motion to dismiss was pending. It also rejected Costco’s approach to reimbursing customers through lower prices and good values as a “vague” statement that is “barely more than shapeless adspeak.’ 

Back in May Costco filed a motion to dismiss the case. It asserted that Stockov, had “no cause of action” against the company on his claims alleging consumer-fraud statutory violations and unjust enrichment. “None of those claims is ripe, as Costco has received no tariff refunds yet and plaintiff’s theory of injury depends entirely on a series of uncertain future events,” the filing stated. 

It also rejected the suit’s allegation that Costco CFO Gary Millerchip’s assertion on a May 2025 earnings call that raising prices would be a “last resort” was deceptive, because he asserted in the same call that the company had raised some prices. 

“Context confirms that the Company’s statement about pricing philosophy was not a promise that prices had not been raised and would not be raised. In the same call, the CFO acknowledged the ‘evolving environment on tariffs’ and explained that Costco had already raised some prices in response,” the filing states.  

Costco was one of a number of companies, including the delivery company FedEx, to be hit by lawsuits filed earlier this year in the wake of the Supreme Court decision by retail customers seeking to recoup the increased tariff-related charges they paid. Companies that assessed fees to cover tariff costs rather than baking duties into higher prices must give the money back to customers, NPR reported Monday.