FedEx filed a lawsuit on Monday demanding a refund of the U.S. tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled were unlawful last week.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, asks that Customs and Border Protection, the agency that collects tariffs, make the repayment to FedEx. The company is expected to be one of many that will sue for a refund.
FedEx did not state a dollar amount that it is seeking. Analysts say the emergency tariffs that the Supreme Court rejected, which President Trump began imposing a year ago, had raised as much as $175 billion for the U.S. government.
“It was totally expected that they would do this, because there’s probably millions and millions of dollars on the line here for them,” said Scott Lincicome, an economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, referring to FedEx.
The Trump administration’s lawyers, in a motion submitted to the trade court last year, said the government would comply with an order to provide refunds if the tariffs were found to be unlawful. But Mr. Trump suggested last week that refunds would face a legal battle.
FedEx often makes customs payments to the government, acting as a so-called importer of record, and then typically passes along the charges to the recipients of the goods. “FedEx has taken necessary action to protect the company’s rights as an importer of record to seek duty refunds,” the company said in a statement Monday.
FedEx is likely to be joined by many other large corporations demanding refunds. Dozens of companies filed lawsuits against the emergency tariffs before the Supreme Court’s ruling.
FedEx’s customers will expect the company to pass on any refunds, Mr. Lincicome said, noting that larger customers are likely to have well-established procedures for being paid back.
Peter Eavis reports on the business of moving stuff around the world.
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