How Do You Refund $166 Billion?

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
In February, when the Supreme Court declared the lion's share of President Trump's tariffs illegal, the justices left one big question unanswered. What did the Supreme Court say about tariff refunds?

**Lydia Wheeler** (0:20)
It said nothing.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:22)
That's my colleague, Lydia Wheeler. Ever since Trump's sweeping tariffs, companies big and small have altogether paid the government billions of dollars. And now, a lot of them want their money back. Is this like the most complicated refund in history?

**Lydia Wheeler** (0:40)
It is a lot of money. It is $166 billion. So you know, the federal government has never been told that it has to give back that much money before. And so what happened is the Supreme Court left it to lower courts to hash all that out.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:58)
Figuring out who gets refunds and how is a complicated job. And that job has fallen to a little known trade court and a little known judge.

**Lydia Wheeler** (1:09)
All of this has put a big spotlight on a little tiny court that no one really knows about and even lawyers often forget exists. And also a very interesting judge who's 77 years old and semi-retired and is now the one like at the helm of figuring out how all these people are going to get their money back.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:32)
What's at stake here to get this right?

**Lydia Wheeler** (1:35)
I mean, we talked to companies who kind of, the terrors put them in a crisis. And there are a lot of companies that are really desperate to get their money back.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:49)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Thursday, April 2nd. Coming up on the show, why is it so hard to give businesses their tariff money back?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:16)
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**Ryan Knutson** (2:51)
So introduce us to this little court that has to figure all this out.

**Lydia Wheeler** (2:56)
Right, so this is the Court of International Trade. It's in Manhattan. It sits across the street from the New York Supreme Court, which is regularly featured on Law and Order. They often do scenes on the front steps of the New York Supreme Court. Well, right across the street in this other federal court complex is this very modern looking smaller building called the Court of International Trade, where these really technical disputes over trade are hashed out.

**Ryan Knutson** (3:25)
The Court of International Trade isn't usually a very happening place. Less than 300 cases were filed there each year in 2023 and 2024

**Lydia Wheeler** (3:34)
The whole purpose of it is to settle disputes over goods that come into the country. They mostly handle claims over tariffs, things that are charged the wrong amount, how things are classified. Every good that comes into the country is given some sort of a classification which determines what duties are owed and how much. And so there are sometimes really technical disputes about, you know, hey, is this glass jar really a glass jar or not?

**Ryan Knutson** (4:01)
Until recently, one of the court's blockbuster cases focused on whether video doorbell cameras should be considered digital cameras or transmission devices, scintillating stuff. But all that changed a year ago when President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on nearly every nation.

**Lydia Wheeler** (4:22)
You know, I keep joking that President Trump has done for trade lawyers what no one thought was possible, which is like made them very cool. They've got all the biggest cases and so...

**Ryan Knutson** (4:32)
I can see that on a hat. Make trade law cool again.

**Lydia Wheeler** (4:35)
Yeah, he totally made trade law like the big thing. This is where all the litigation is happening.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:41)
After Trump's tariffs, companies flooded the Court of International Trade with lawsuits, arguing that the administration's terrorists were illegal. And now that the Supreme Court has sided with these companies, the Court of International Trade has to deal with more than 3,000 refund requests.

**Lydia Wheeler** (4:59)
All these lawsuits are largely carbon copies of one another. They're basically copy and paste jobs, except for they have different attorneys and the company name is different, but they all say about the same thing. Like, hey, you know, Supreme Court ruled this and you owe me money.