Even if the Supreme Court rules Trump’s global tariffs are illegal, refunds are unlikely because that would be ‘very complicated,’ Hassett says
https://fortune.com/2025/12/21/tariff-refunds-supreme-court-ieepa-case-trump-reciprocal-duties-hassett/
Posted by kylestoned
15 Comments
I honestly doubt the Supreme Court is going to hand out a blanket “everyone gets their money back” ruling if they strike down the IEEPA tariffs.
SCOTUS ruling will likely be “prospective only” (meaning they just stop from that day forward).
This means companies will have to bring lawsuits separately.
“if you do something so illegal and messy that’s it’s complicated enough to unwind, we won’t actually right any wrongs already committed”
Did I get that right?
What’s the supreme court’s position on infanticide? How complicated is this?
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA00025010.pdf
Page 3.
I doubt it even matters what they rule, how would it be enforced and by who exactly. The days of honor and duty are long gone in American, no one is going to stand up just to be slaughtered by the powers at be. We are now the land of the rich, the administration feels no obligation or real reason to follow court orders. They have already proven this over and over.
Total bullshit, US Customs has a standard process to make refund claims and even if the entry has been liquidated(closed) there is a process to get a refund.
Customs could also easily process refunds automatically like they’ve done in the past when programs like GSP expired and were later renewed requiring retroactive refunds.
My biggest fear is the permanency of these tariffs. Governments in general love to spend drunk sailors on payday, it will be very hard for future administrations, irrespective of the party, to turn off the faucet that brings in $1T/yr in revenue especially when the consumption pattern has largely remained unchanged.
If they are ruled illegal, there isn’t going to be a refund. I don’t think there’s any basis in reality for a legitimate expectation. Hope, certainly, but don’t expect.
Send a message with your votes.
If the Supreme Court finds the tariffs illegal, then what we have here is Republican government which has illegally charged the American people billions of dollars in taxes now turning around and saying, “No we can’t and won’t pay it back.”
The truly galling part will be the 2028 election when the Republican candidate runs on lower taxes. “We’re not going to tax the American people like those Democrats!”
Great issue to run on in 2028 then. “Let’s get your money back” sounds like a great campaign slogan to me. Especially if you can make it a reality.
I am pretty confident that the reason we do accounting in buisiness is so that we can account for where the money went in order to hold those responsible for said moneys accountable for its misuse. Now I may be an outlier here but the excuse of being too hard has never stopped a corporation from pursuing me for money it believes I owe them. The debt collection industry would collapse if it was just too hard.
SCOTUS is going to allow the tariffs.
Their exact ruling will boil down to this: How are we, the courts, able to decide if this is a security issue? That is the administrations job. They decided it was, so it is decided.
If that happens Lutnick & Sons are gonna be pissed. They put up a fair amount of money back on Liberation Day to bet that the tariffs would ultimately be deemed unconstitutional. If SCOTUS essentially splits the baby on this, they lose all of that premium they paid eight months ago.
DoJ, the White House Counsel’s office, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, National Economic Council Chief Kevin Hassett and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer should have informed President Trump that the Constitution gave Congress the power to impose taxes and tariffs. If Trump and the Trump Administration did not understand the Constitution or willfully violated the Constitution, they have nobody to blame but themselves! My parents never would have accepted a claim that it was too difficult to right a wrong. The Supreme Court shouldn’t accept that excuse either, although this Supreme Court has lost nearly all credibility!
Ah, just the well-researched and broadly supported economic theory of Smashing and Grabbing Before the Sucker Can React. This is the secret recipe for the new American era.
If it’s illegal, any person or business would face consequence; and according to the right, the government is supposed to be a business.
Any person or business would simply face consequences or have to return and if not face consequences; but of course this admin will get by with it and not a single thing will done about it.