A federal court has ordered President Donald Trump's administration to begin processing refunds on tens of billions of dollars in emergency tariffs the US Supreme Court said last month were unlawful.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) must recalculate final duties owed on "any and all" imported goods without including the tariffs that Trump imposed under law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Richard Eaton, a judge on the US Court of International Trade, wrote in a three-page decision on Wednesday.
Eaton, who said he is the only judge on the court hearing IEEPA tariff refund cases, said the Supreme Court's decision that struck down Trump's emergency tariffs should provide across-the-board relief, even to those that had not filed lawsuits. Thousands of companies have already filed lawsuits seeking refunds of the IEEPA tariffs, which collected an estimated $175bn from importers during the nearly one-year period when Trump had them in effect.
"All importers of record whose entries were subject to IEEPA duties are entitled to the benefit of the Learning Resources decision," Eaton wrote, referencing the name of the Supreme Court's tariff ruling.
The court's order does not explicitly lay out the refund process, but instead applies to customs entries that are "unliquidated" — those that are pending — and those that are liquidated but not yet final. The order, issued as part of a tariff refund lawsuit an air filtration product company filed less than a week ago, suggests that courts intend to move quickly on refunds after the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling finding Trump had no authority to impose his emergency tariffs.
Earlier this week, a federal appeals court denied a request by the Trump administration for a months-long delay in court proceedings over tariff refunds, allowing tariff lawsuits to resume in the Court of International Trade. Trump previously said the refund process might take "years" to resolve in court.
The Trump administration told Eaton this week it was still considering "next steps" for the Supreme Court opinion, including the mechanics and "scope" of refunds. As of Wednesday, CBP said it had not paid refunds on any of the IEEPA tariffs.
In a court filing earlier on Wednesday, the administration conceded that it would have to also pay interest on any tariff refunds it is required to make. The cumulative interest payments on the refunded tariffs could reach $700mn each month, according to calculations the think tank Cato Institute published this week.
US senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), in a letter on Wednesday to administration officials, said that the Trump administration's "dithering" on tariff refunds had created an opening for those on Wall Street to offer small companies with immediate cash needs "pennies on the dollars" to purchase their tariff refund rights. Further delaying tariff refunds would result in "more pain" for US companies and their customers, he wrote.
