Wilbur Ross was Trump’s first-term tariff hawk. Now he says refunds give importers ‘an extra profit’ and pay them ‘more than the money’ they laid out

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When Wilbur Ross ran the Commerce Department during President Donald Trump’s first term, tariffs had one job: shrink the trade deficit. Seven years later, he said the president is using them for something else, and that the refunds from the ones the Supreme Court struck down are going to the wrong people.

“It’s a whole different picture,” Ross told Fortune. “He made the decision not just to use the tariffs for purposes of changing the trade deficit. He used them for a variety of other purposes. So it’s a whole different conceptual approach.”