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American businesses that paid President Trump's tariffs for a year want to know when they get the refund. That's their top question after the Supreme Court found those tariffs to be illegal. NPR's Alina Selyukh has been talking with business owners.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Sarah Wells had developed a bit of an obsessive habit in recent weeks.
SARAH WELLS: Every day that the Supreme Court this year has had a decision opportunity, I've been refreshing their website.
SELYUKH: Waiting for a ruling in a case brought by small businesses not too different from hers. Her company called Sarah Wells Bags, sells backpacks and totes for breast pumps for new moms. The lawsuit had argued that President Trump acted illegally when he used emergency authority to set new taxes on virtually all imports. Wells, in the past year, has paid $35,000 in those specific taxes.
WELLS: So I've been waiting with bated breath to get this decision because it's so impactful on whether we can even really continue operations going forward.
SELYUKH: On the morning when the ruling finally came rejecting Trump's tariffs, her power went out. A rainstorm was tearing through her suburb in Virginia. Wells raced to the nearest cafe for internet and thought of all the ways she could use that $35,000.
WELLS: If we got the refunds, I know what I would do is I would start hiring again because we need it. But I think it's really contingent on the refunds.
SELYUKH: Ask anyone who sells anything in the U.S. right now what's on their mind and they'll probably say tariff refunds. The Supreme Court says about half of Trump's tariffs from last year are unconstitutional - that's a total of more than $100 billion in taxes. And anyone who's paid part of those tariffs should get their money back, including small businesses like Sarah Wells Bags.
WELLS: And we not only need the money back, but we need a process to get the money back that doesn't involve lawyers, really 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. It sent the case back to a lower court. Trump has suggested repayments could get bogged down in litigation for years. Lots of small companies and big ones like Costco and Revlon have already preemptively sued in trade court to get in line for potential refunds. In Indiana, Danny Reynolds wonders where that leaves him.
DANNY REYNOLDS: Especially for small businesses who don't have, you know - retained legal teams to file suit and sort of get their place in line, so to speak, you know, you sort of wonder will there be anybody going to bat for us?
SELYUKH: Reynolds runs a clothing store called Stephenson's of Elkhart. It's almost a century old, and it sells imported wedding dresses, mostly from China. But his case is complicated because he does not import those dresses. He pays another company to bring in the containers of wedding gowns, and that company pays the tariffs to the U.S. government. But then it does charge Reynolds a tariff fee. So when or if his supplier gets a tariff refund, would Reynolds actually get any of his tariff fees back?
REYNOLDS: As an indirect importer, what does the process look like? Would the refunds come from our suppliers?
SELYUKH: Business owners are messaging each other and their trade groups with questions like these. In San Francisco, Alfred Mai, who sells card games through his firm ASM Games, asked AI for thoughts on how he might file a refund claim. The answer pointed him to a government portal that a lot of small business owners are logging onto now. It's called ACE, A-C-E.
ALFRED MAI: And I've been struggling for the past hour trying to log in. I'm guessing everyone and their mothers are rushing in right now to do what I'm doing.
SELYUKH: The portal is where importers have long been able to ask for tariff refunds as a result of, say, a typo or an error on their customs form. The database could be a way the refunds might work. It tracks all the customs payments, but there's no assurance that it will in fact be the process. Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
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