The following story is republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. and was originally posted by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star written by Ashley Murray
WASHINGTON — Arizona coffee roaster Gabe Hagen is wondering if he’ll ever recoup the tens of thousands of dollars he paid in tariffs to import beans from the world’s major coffee-growing regions in South America, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.
Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs as illegal, Hagen is among an army of small business owners who are unsure if they’ll be made whole after a year of increasing costs and uncertainty.
“I’m in the process right now trying to consolidate all of my invoices … because I need the money back — if they’re going to give it back,” Hagen told States Newsroom in an interview.
“A pallet of coffee would cost us 5 to 6 to $7,000 if we had a bag or two of really high-grade in there. Post tariffs, our cheapest pallet was around $8,000, and it went anywhere from 8 to $10,000 or $11,000 per pallet of coffee,” he said.
How the government will refund the roughly $166 billion in tariffs Trump triggered under a 1970s emergency economic powers statute is slowly coming to light in court documents.
Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
Nearly 2,000 companies filed suit for tariff refunds in the U.S. Court of International Trade, with many lining up even before the highly anticipated 6-3 Supreme Court decision.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s four-step refund process for businesses is anywhere from 40% to 80% complete, depending on the step, according to a court-mandated update filed March 12 with the Court of International Trade.
Justices leave it to the lower courts
The justices, not giving guidance on refunds, left the matter to the lower courts in their Feb. 20 ruling that invalidated the sweeping tariffs Trump unilaterally imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
The president declared various emergencies under the statute during his first year in office.
From fentanyl smuggling, to trade imbalances, to political disputes, he used each declared crisis to impose steep taxes on imports.
Shifting sometimes day to day, tariffs reached as high as 50% on Brazilian and Indian goods after Trump declared emergencies over the prosecution of a political ally and over the use of Russian oil, respectively.
U.S. importers saw tariffs spike as high as 145% on Chinese goods during a tit-for-tat trade war sparked by Trump’s declaration of a trade imbalance emergency. The duties largely settled at a roughly 50% effective rate on several products after the trade war and negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy.
The Trump administration has since sought different pathways to collect tariffs, including almost immediately instituting temporary import taxes under a different 1970s trade statute.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has also commenced widespread investigations into dozens of the largest U.S. trading partners that could trigger new tariffs, depending on findings.
‘Survived, but barely’
The rollercoaster ride was enough to almost bring down Busy Baby, a Minnesota-based baby product company that manufactures several patented designs in China.
Busy Baby owner Beth Benike, who shared her experience with States Newsroom in February, is now suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to recoup money lost.
Matthew Platkin, former New Jersey attorney general and Benike’s lawyer, said Benike’s business “survived, but barely.”
“She had to keep merchandise overseas because she couldn’t afford to pay to bring them here. And when she didn’t get product, she wasn’t getting paid, she wasn’t making money,” Platkin said in an interview with States Newsroom.
“She had opportunities lined up for expansion. She was going to hire new folks. That didn’t happen, and that was because of one thing: the president’s illegal tariffs,” he said.
Benike’s complaint does not specify a dollar amount, but Platkin said, “It’s substantial, especially for a business of her size.”
“We’re still going through and assessing the full impact of the tariffs on her, but rest assured, even for a small business, it’s tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum,” Platkin said.
“The federal government should just refund these folks their money with interest, period. Like, this shouldn’t even require litigation. They were caught taking illegal tariffs from millions of businesses,” he said.
$166 billion collected
Federal Judge Richard Eaton, who sits on the bench for the Court of International Trade, ordered administration customs officials in early March to stop collecting the tariffs deemed illegal under IEEPA, and to recalculate any past duties that included them.
Eaton granted the March 5 order in the tariff refund lawsuit brought by Atmus Filtration, a Nashville, Tennessee-based company.
The judge, however, outlined that orders in the Court of International Trade are “universal” for all tariff refunds owed — meaning the trade cases are not subject to the Supreme Court’s 2025 finding in a separate immigration case that universal rulings are impermissible.
Businesses the size of Busy Baby to behemoths like Costco and FedEx have paid tariffs to the U.S. government. Many, but not all, have sued.
Customs officials, in a March 6 court filing, declared any refund process would take at least 45 days to be functional. According to the filing, as of early March the agency had collected approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs from 330,000 American importers.
Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, research associate for trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said as the clock ticks on tariff refunds, interest is accruing.
“The refunds are not necessarily coming soon and that has big implications, obviously, for taxpayers, but I think most importantly for the companies that are relying on this money to literally keep their doors open,” Obregon said.
He and colleagues calculated the government’s interest payments on the refunds owed totals about $700 million more with each passing month.
Barton O’Brien, who told States Newsroom last month his dog apparel company ate the tariff costs rather than raise prices, said he’s “certainly not counting on a refund anytime soon” as the administration “seems pretty dead set” on not giving them.
“I expect they will drag out the process in the courts for as long as they can,” he said in a written response to States Newsroom on March 9. “If we get one, great… It’s a bonus. But still won’t cover the hole left by the tariffs.”
“Also, as a small business we’re not in a position to fight the administration, so I’m happy to sit back and let … other Fortune 500 companies with an army of lawyers fight this one out on our behalf. If they win, we’ll all get refunds,” said O’Brien, who works with manufacturers in China and India.
‘Do the right thing’
Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for the advocacy group Main Street Alliance, said his organization will continue to apply legal and public pressure to ensure small businesses recoup the money.
“I would just say that the administration should do the right thing and return the money, and they also should stop trying to find cute, creative ways to institute new tariffs that are also going to be illegal and struck down,” he said.
Two dozen Democratic-led states have already sued the administration in the Court of International Trade over the new tariffs Trump announced immediately after his Supreme Court loss.
The lawsuit, led by Oregon, also includes Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Small businesses and Democratic-led states were instrumental in the Supreme Court’s February decision striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.
States Newsroom reached out to the Trump administration for comment but did not receive a reply.
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