After SCOTUS deals blow to Trump’s tariffs, businesses wonder if refunds are coming : NPR

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American businesses that paid President Trump’s tariffs for a year want to know when they will receive their refund. That’s their main question after the Supreme Court ruled these tariffs illegal. NPR’s Alina Selyukh spoke with business owners.

ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Sarah Wells had developed a somewhat obsessive habit in recent weeks.

SARAH WELLS: Every day the Supreme Court had a chance to issue a decision this year, I updated its website.

SELYUKH: Waiting for a decision in a case brought by small businesses not unlike his own. Her company, Sarah Wells Bags, sells breast pump backpacks and totes aimed at new moms. The lawsuit had argued that President Trump acted illegally by using his emergency power to place new taxes on virtually all imports. Wells, over the past year, paid $35,000 in specific taxes.

WELLS: So I’m looking forward to getting that ruling because it has a huge impact on whether we can actually continue operations in the future.

SELYUKH: The morning the decision was finally issued rejecting Trump’s tariffs, his power was cut off. A rainstorm ravaged his Virginia suburb. Wells rushed to the nearest coffee shop to get on the Internet and thought of all the ways she could use that $35,000.

WELLS: If we got the reimbursements, I know what I would do is start hiring again because we need to. But I think it really depends on the reimbursements.

SELYUKH: Ask anyone selling anything in the United States right now what they think and they’ll probably say duty refunds. The Supreme Court rules that about half of the tariffs Trump imposed last year are unconstitutional, totaling more than $100 billion in taxes. And everyone who paid a portion of these rates should get their money back, including small businesses like Sarah Wells Bags.

WELLS: And we not only need to get the money back, but we need a process to get the money back that doesn’t involve lawyers, very time-consuming paperwork, expensive processes, like, none of us have the bandwidth or the resources to do that.

SELYUKH: Except the High Court said nothing about how refunds might work. He sent the case back to a lower court. Trump has suggested the refunds could be bogged down in litigation for years. Many small and large companies like Costco and Revlon have already filed preemptive action in commercial court to queue up possible refunds. In Indiana, Danny Reynolds wonders where this leaves him.

DANNY REYNOLDS: Especially for small businesses that don’t have, you know, retained legal teams to file suit and kind of wait in line, so to speak, you know, you kind of wonder, is anyone going to fight for us?

SELYUKH: Reynolds runs a clothing store called Stephenson’s of Elkhart. It is almost a century old and sells imported wedding dresses, mainly from China. But his case is complicated because he does not import these dresses. He pays another company to bring in the containers of wedding dresses, and that company pays the customs duties to the U.S. government. But then he charges Reynolds a tariff fee. So, when or if its supplier obtains a customs duty refund, will Reynolds actually recover any portion of its customs duty costs?

REYNOLDS: As an indirect importer, what does the process look like? Would reimbursements come from our suppliers?

SELYUKH: Business owners are messaging each other and their professional groups with questions like these. In San Francisco, Alfred Mai, who sells card games through his company ASM Games, asked AI for its opinion on how he could file a refund request. The response directed him to a government portal that many small business owners currently log into. It’s called ACE, ACE.

ALFRED MAI: And I’ve been having trouble for the past hour trying to connect. I guess everyone and their mothers are rushing right now to do what I’m doing.

SELYUKH: The portal is where importers have long been able to request customs duty refunds following, for example, a typo or error on their customs form. The database could be a way for reimbursements to work. It tracks all customs payments, but there is no guarantee that this will actually be the case. Alina Selyukh, NPR News.

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