Trump's Trials - After SCOTUS deals blow to Trump's tariffs, businesses wonder if refunds are coming

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Following a Supreme Court ruling that rejected about half of President Trump's tariffs, U.S. businesses question whether refunds are coming their way. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Trump's terms. I'm Scott Detrow. President Trump promised every single American that he would make America safe again. Every single day in the Oval Office, the president looks at us and says, why haven't we done more? This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president. With a focus on ways his administration is pushing the boundaries of presidential power. Here's the latest from NPR.

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 Elena Seljuk has been talking with business owners. Sarah Wells had developed a bit of an obsessive habit in recent weeks. Every day that the Supreme Court this year has had a decision opportunity, I've been refreshing their website. Waiting for a ruling in a case brought by small businesses not too different from her. Her company called Sarah Wells Bags sells backpacks and toads 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. Especially for small businesses who don't have 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? Reynolds runs a clothing store called Stevenson-Zovelkart. 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-free, would Reynolds actually get any of his tariff fees back? As an indirect importer, what does the process look like? Would the refunds come from our suppliers? 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 logged.

on to now. It's called ASP, ACE. 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. 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 Seluk, NPR News.

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