Earlier today I noted Supreme Court Strikes Trump's Reciprocal Tariffs In 6-3 Vote

Since the Supreme Court made no ruling on refunds it will be up to the US Court of International Trade to decide when and how.

Expect refunds. That was also my prediction. Most didn't, even those who expected the courts to smack this.

Tariff Ruling Kicks Off Messy Fight Over $170 Billion in Refunds

Bloomberg reports Tariff Ruling Kicks Off Messy Fight Over $170 Billion in Refunds

"The court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers," Kavanaugh wrote. "But that process is likely to be a 'mess,' as was acknowledged" during the court's oral arguments in November.

US Customs and Border Protection so far has collected an estimated $170 billion in tariffs imposed by Trump using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law at the center of the case, as of Dec. 14.

The court ruled that using IEEPA to impose tariffs wasn't lawful, but the justices didn't address whether importers are entitled to refunds, leaving it to a lower court to sort out those issues. The litigation will return to the US Court of International Trade for the next round of legal wrangling.

While waiting for the justices to rule, more than 1,500 companies have filed their own tariff lawsuits in the trade court to put themselves in line for tariff refunds, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

The trade court in recent months has pressed the Justice Department for at least a hint of how it plans to handle the refund issue if it lost at the Supreme Court.

In written submissions, government lawyers have said that the administration won't fight the court's authority to order officials to recalculate tariffs, but left open the possibility that it might try to limit which importers are eligible.

The US trade court has experience managing a mass refund process. After the Supreme Court struck down a harbor maintenance tax on exporters in 1998, the court created a claims process. That fight involved approximately 4,000 cases and $750 million in taxes paid, according to court records and reports at the time.

The scale of Trump's contested tariffs is far larger — by the end of 2025, the government told the trade court that more than 300,000 importers had paid the contested tariffs so far.