From the buy-in-bulk retailer Costco to the canned-tuna company Bumble Bee Foods, some U.S. businesses are racing to get in line for tariff refunds, anticipating that the Supreme Court will soon rule against President Trump and force him to return billions of dollars collected on imports.
A growing roster of companies in recent weeks has hired lawyers, filed lawsuits or submitted official claims to the U.S. government, all in an early bid to secure a quick payout in the event that the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s global trade war is struck down.
For the moment, the fate of the money collected from his sweeping tariffs rests in the hands of the Supreme Court justices. At oral arguments last month, they seemed skeptical of the president’s vast assertions of power to tax imports at a whim, stoking suspicions that they could deliver a defining blow to Mr. Trump’s economic strategy.
A ruling against the president could also force the Trump administration to pay back a substantial portion of the roughly $200 billion it has collected in duties since the start of the year. While the Supreme Court offered little indication as to whether it would order such refunds, some businesses have started the legal legwork to obtain them anyway, aiming to beat the rush and recover their full tariff costs.
The latest lawsuit arrived on Friday, as lawyers for Costco asked a federal trade court to invalidate the president’s tariffs and “ensure that its right to a complete refund is not jeopardized” as the justices deliberate.
The retailer did not indicate how much it had paid in tariffs since Mr. Trump ratcheted up duties beginning this spring. But Costco’s lawsuit reflected the reality that the financial burden of tariffs often falls hardest on American importers, not foreigners, as the White House has insisted. Through August, companies had absorbed about half of the cost of tariffs, while passing on more than one-third to consumers, according to Goldman Sachs.
Similar lawsuits have been filed recently by cosmetics companies, including Revlon Consumer Products; Valeo North America, an automotive supplier; Interstate Batteries, which makes car batteries; Kawasaki, which manufactures motorcycles; and Bumble Bee Foods, according to court filings. Each of the companies, along with Costco, is represented by the law firm Crowell & Moring, which declined to comment. Bumble Bee and Costco did not respond to requests for comment.
Other firms, particularly small businesses, have opted for alternative routes. They have filed formal appeals with Customs and Border Protection, in what may presage a flood of similar claims. And some companies have sought to sell the rights to any future tariff refunds to a stable of eager investment firms, giving up the prospect of a big payday later for a more certain, yet far smaller, payment now.
The White House declined to comment.
The intensifying scramble highlights the financial stresses mounting on private businesses, some of which have been forced to raise prices, cut sales forecasts, slow hiring, delay production and rejigger their entire supply chains as they contend with shifting tariff policies in Mr. Trump’s second term.
Despite the signs of economic strain, Mr. Trump has instead delighted in his tariffs as a success. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, he repeatedly claimed that he was “making a lot of money” from tariffs, which he said had made the country “wealthy” again.
To impose the duties, the president has relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which does not explicitly name tariffs in the range of authorities it affords to the White House. Mr. Trump’s actions prompted small businesses and states to sue, and twice courts have sided with them, finding that the law, known as IEEPA, does not grant the president such authority.
When the case reached the Supreme Court last month, the justices at times echoed those concerns, even as some of the court’s conservative members acknowledged it may be difficult to unwind the president’s duties — and determine the fate of the hundreds of billions collected in the process.
“It seems to me like it could be a mess,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett mused at one point during the hearing, referring to any refund process.
“We don’t deny that it’s difficult,” responded Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing the small businesses in the case. He then sketched out a range of additional options available to the court, including delays or limits to any refunds.
Joshua E. Kurland, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said the exchange reinforced the “uncertainty” facing businesses in the weeks since the court heard the case. Even if Mr. Trump were to lose, he said, it was unclear “how that would look in practice.”
A decision on refunds may not happen immediately, and the Supreme Court could send the matter back to lower courts to review. But if the courts ultimately decide that U.S. importers should get refunds, it will touch off a legal scramble among companies to figure out how to qualify for them.
Richard Mojica, a trade lawyer at Miller & Chevalier Chartered, said many of his corporate clients had been asking about how to preserve their rights to any refund. Some firms have taken to petitioning the customs office, either to contest the tariffs they owe or to extend the period in which the government settles on the duties a company must pay.
In some cases, the customs office has denied companies’ requests to extend that evaluation window, known formally as liquidation, in a move that could make it harder for business to obtain refunds later if the Supreme Court rules in their favor. That has prompted some to consider more aggressive legal measures, including suing the Trump administration to protect their full refund rights.
“Now companies are asking, ‘Wait, should I just go straight to court?’” Mr. Mojica said.
To be sure, the Trump administration could allow companies to request tariff refunds in a relatively straightforward manner. When the Supreme Court struck down an export tax in 1998, for example, the government set up a system to refund the companies that had paid the tax with interest, with the U.S. Court of International Trade overseeing the process.
But some trade experts said they doubted the Trump administration would work as hard to give back tariff revenue, which the president promised on Tuesday to use to pay down debt and send Americans rebate checks. Repeatedly, Mr. Trump has asserted that any decision requiring him to return tariff revenue would set off an economic calamity, plunging the United States into a depression, though experts contest that claim.
“Evil, American hating Forces are fighting us at the United States Supreme Court,” the president said on social media last week. “Pray to God that our Nine Justices will show great wisdom, and do the right thing for America!”
If the refund process is difficult, it could pose the greatest challenge for small businesses or individual consumers who have fewer resources to hire lawyers, file paperwork and, potentially, fight for their money in court.
“Will the Trump administration play ball there?” asked Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University. “Or will it refuse to play ball and say, ‘If you want your money back you have to sue us’? That strikes me as possible, too.”
With much at stake for their bottom lines, some business owners have considered forgoing the process altogether. At the inducement of investment firms, they have sold the rights to any future refund in exchange for an early, upfront payment, sometimes at pennies on the dollar.
Scott Lincicome, the vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian group, said the activity spoke to how the court case was being viewed on Wall Street. He said it showed investors were “increasingly confident that Trump is going to lose at the Supreme Court.”
In an email to a prospective client in late November that was viewed by The New York Times, one broker at Oppenheimer & Company, an investment bank, advertised that the rights to refunds on so-called reciprocal tariffs were trading at 20 to 30 cents on the dollar, while those for fentanyl tariffs were in the high teens.
In an emailed response, a spokesman for Oppenheimer said it was acting solely as an intermediary — not buying any of the claims itself but rather connecting importers who paid the tariffs with hedge and distressed-debt funds willing to buy their potential legal claims.
Other firms, including Cantor Fitzgerald, reportedly explored similar trades. But a spokeswoman for that firm, which was formerly led by Howard Lutnick, now the secretary of commerce, denied that it had placed any in September. Cantor did not respond to a request for comment.
For entrepreneurs like Sarah Wells, whose company makes bags and accessories for breastfeeding mothers, the offer to sell her refund rights arrived in June — and the notion that she might receive some cash upfront seemed “tempting” at the time.
Ms. Wells estimated that her company, Sarah Wells Bags, paid $15,000 under the tariff rates that Mr. Trump announced in the spring on countries including Cambodia, where she recently moved much of her production. The offer she received from Outpost Capital Partners, an investment firm, would have been for about 20 percent of what she could receive, depending on how the Supreme Court ruled, she said. (The firm did not respond to a request for comment.)
Ultimately, Ms. Wells opted instead to file a protest with the customs office, as she made the public case against the president’s trade policies as part of an advocacy group called We Pay Tariffs. While she said the odds were “substantial” that the justices could soon rule against the president, Ms. Wells said she felt a sense of unease about how, and when, the relief would arrive.
“We don’t have any idea if this is overturned by the Supreme Court what the refund process will be, how long will it take,” she said, adding of the refunds: “What if it takes a year or longer to go through the process of getting it out? Some businesses don’t have that time.”
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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