A federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to respond by Friday to a request for tariff refunds, initiating what could be a long fight over billions collected from tariffs.
Judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ordered the administration to formally respond to a request from small businesses that challenged Trump’s tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The order comes after the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act didn’t give Trump expansive tariff powers. The high court said Congress alone has the power to impose tariffs.
Attorneys for the Liberty Justice Center, the Texas-based nonprofit law firm that brought the tariff case, said small businesses have suffered under the weight of the highest tariffs in nearly a century.
“Plaintiffs are small businesses that have been paying the exceedingly burdensome tariffs for almost a full year, and who have suffered the dire financial consequences of those tariff payments,” the attorneys wrote in a separate motion before the Court of International Trade.
The attorneys asked for a permanent injunction to block tariff collection under IEEPA and sought refunds with interest.
Last Friday, Trump criticized the high court for its silence on the issue of refunds and said, “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”
Businesses want to avoid prolonged litigation.
“Swift refunds of the impermissible tariffs will be meaningful for the more than 200,000 small business importers in this country and will help support stronger economic growth this year,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Recent research shows Americans paid the cost of Trump’s tariffs.
“U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Other studies have reported similar findings. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that Americans are paying almost the entire cost of tariffs. A December 2025 study from Duke’s Department of Economics found that during the 2019-21 trade dispute, consumers ultimately paid more than the tariff cost on European wines.
