Businesses are pressing the Trump administration to issue tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Trump unlawfully imposed levies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. Yet that process faces potential legal and political roadblocks, with experts saying it could drag out for years.
Economists and trade experts told CBS News they expect the issue to be litigated in court, while no government mechanism is currently set up for businesses to file for or collect a tariff refund.
“We anticipate another long legal fight over those refunds,” Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist with Capital Economics, said in a note to investors.
Will Americans get tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruling?
The Supreme Court did not indicate in its ruling whether businesses that paid billions of dollars in IEEPA tariffs must be reimbursed, effectively punting the question to lower courts.
In a press conference on Friday after the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Trump demurred on whether his administration will issue refunds, but suggested the process is likely to be drawn out — possibly for years.
“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” he said. “What happens to all the money we took in? It wasn’t discussed.”
“I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years,” he added.
The Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative focused on public policy analysis, estimated Friday that businesses could be owed up to $165 billion in tariff refunds.
How would a tariff refund work?
Currently, no procedures are in place to automatically refund businesses for the IEEPA tariffs they paid; similarly, no portal exists that would enable businesses to apply for reimbursement.
Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in economics at Pacific Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that supports free-market principles, told CBS News that processing billions of dollars in tariff refunds would be an “unprecedented” move by the federal government.
“Certainly, the administration is not going to volunteer refunds, and companies will have to ask for them,” he said. “The bottom line is that the government didn’t have the authority to levy the tax, so they are entitled to refunds.”
Although Winegarden said businesses will likely have to jump through various hoops to claim a refund, he suspects some companies will opt against filing for compensation out of concern that it could anger Mr. Trump.
“It’s a complicated mess. For businesses, it’s a crapshoot, and he’s a punitive person, so that will keep them from asking,” Winegarden told CBS News.
Which tariffs would qualify for a tariff refund?
The Supreme Court struck down country-based tariffs imposed under IEEPA. Those levies account for roughly 60% of the U.S. tariff revenue collected each month, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.
At a speech at the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested it is unclear if the federal government must provide tariff refunds to businesses, saying the issue is “in dispute.”
“The Supreme Court did not rule on that today — they pushed it back down to the International Tax and Trade Court. And you know, my sense is that could be dragged out for weeks, months, years,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has said it is working to replace the IEEPA tariffs through other powers.
“We can use other of the statutes, other of the tariff authorities, which have also been confirmed and are fully allowed,” Mr. Trump said Friday. To that end, he announced he would impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act.
The president also indicated that his administration would seek to expand other existing tariffs, such as levies imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act.
Who has called for tariff refunds?
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collective, a progressive economic think tank, said that businesses have filed more than 1,000 claims for tariff refunds with the Court of International Trade. He expects that number to soar following Friday’s high court ruling.
Those cases “have been stayed since the Supreme Court decided they would take this on — now they will all go forward,” he said. “There will be a massive number of cases.”
Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for Main Street Alliance, a small business advocacy group that opposes Mr. Trump’s tariffs, urged the White House to swiftly provide refunds.
“We are going to work really hard to get the money back, because it’s the kind of money that can make a business unsustainable,” he said, noting that some small business owners have closed permanently because of higher tariff costs.
“If tariffs are deemed illegal, then the money should be paid back, and you would hope they follow the law and the ruling,” Phetteplace added.
Following the Supreme Court decision, some state political leaders also called on Mr. Trump to issue refunds to U.S. consumers.
“Trump took hard-earned money from the pockets of working families and the American people. Time to pay up,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video posted on social media.
In a memo on Friday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also demanded that the Trump administration pay every household in the state $1,700 each — a total of $8 billion. That is the amount Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Economic Committee recently estimated that U.S. families have paid in tariff costs.
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