The US government opened a $166 billion tariff refund portal on Monday — and questions are back over whether Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment bank run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons, positioned itself months ago to collect a significant portion of it.
Cantor — now run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle — was documented by Wired offering to buy the rights to potential government refunds from companies that paid IEEPA tariffs, fronting immediate cash in exchange for the full payout if courts ruled the levies illegal.
The firm told clients it had “capacity to trade up to several hundred million” in such claims and had already executed a $10 million deal, expecting volume to “balloon in the coming weeks.”
Read: Howard Lutnick’s Sons Running His Old Firm Are Betting Against Trump Tariffs
The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional on February 20. CBP’s CAPE refund portal opened Monday morning. Those claims, bought at 20-30 cents, are now worth 100 cents on the dollar — a potential 300% return on every dollar deployed.
Cantor has consistently denied completing any transactions. “Cantor Fitzgerald has never executed any transactions or taken any position on tariff refund claims,” a spokesperson told Newsweek after the ruling. “In July 2025, certain Cantor salespeople explored brokering tariff trades, but Cantor never executed any transactions.” The firm called the Wired reporting false. A Commerce spokesperson said Lutnick “knows nothing about this decision because he has no insight or strategic control over Cantor Fitzgerald.”
Senators Wyden and Warren sent a formal letter to Brandon Lutnick in August 2025, demanding documentation of every Tariff Refund Agreement drafted, finalized, and sold. Rep. Jamie Raskin opened a House Judiciary investigation in February 2026 after the ruling, pressing both Lutnicks for all communications between Commerce and Cantor — alleging the firm traded refund rights while their father allegedly had access to nonpublic tariff policy information, calling it “troubling questions of federal ethics and insider trading.”
Politico reported, as cited by NOTUS, that Trump personally confronted Lutnick at Mar-a-Lago in late December after learning Cantor’s revenue grew 25% in 2025.
Howard Lutnick publicly told Americans that tariffs were permanent and championed them as Commerce Secretary, while his sons ran a firm that, per Wired’s reporting, built a position paying out if they weren’t.
Fortune reported in March that the broader secondary market for tariff refund claims could reach $100 billion, with 15 to 50% of all claims potentially sold by importers who, as we noted last July, preferred liquidity now over waiting a year for a check in the mail.
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