When courts declared the 2025 import tariffs illegal, the refund checks that followed raised a quiet but consequential question: who does recovered money belong to — the corporation that paid the tariff, or the consumer who ultimately bore the cost? Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have each answered that question in their own favor, arguing in federal courts that the price a willing buyer pays in a free market is a completed transaction, not an ongoing obligation. The lawsuits proceeding against them ask whether corporate windfall and consumer harm can coexist without remedy — a tension as old a