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The Trump administration may soon have to give back more than $130 billion that it collected in tariffs from U.S. importers. The Supreme Court ruled those tariffs were illegal nearly two weeks ago, and since then, the administration has dragged its feet about returning the money. Now a specialty trade court is trying to put the refunds on a fast track. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Jay Foreman's toy company paid some $7 million in tariffs last year. After the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump had overstepped his authority in ordering those import taxes, Foreman says the next step should be obvious.
JAY FOREMAN: If you took something from somebody that you weren't supposed to take, like money, you're supposed to give it back, and you're not supposed to give a whole bunch of BS about how it's too complicated.
HORSLEY: Still, Foreman was resigned to the idea he'd have to wage a lengthy legal battle to get a refund. President Trump has a long history of stalling when it comes to paying legal judgments. Hours after the high court announced its decision, Trump complained the majority said nothing about returning the money the government illegally collected.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wouldn't you think they would've put one sentence in there saying that - keep the money or don't keep the money, right? I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.
HORSLEY: But the president's effort to slow-walk any refunds is meeting stiff resistance in federal court. On Monday, an appeals court rejected a Justice Department request for a 90-day pause, and yesterday, a specialized trade court ordered customs officials to start paying refunds immediately. A government lawyer objected, saying the administration is still formulating its position on refunds, but Judge Richard Eaton was blunt, saying the Supreme Court left the president with no wiggle room.
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RICHARD EATON: The law's clear. The duties were unlawful from the moment that they were imposed, and that means that every single cent must be returned to the importer.
HORSLEY: The Justice Department argued that, in order to claim a refund, every importer would have to file its own lawsuit. But with more than 2,000 such cases already clogging the court's docket, Judge Eaton says no one wants that kind of hassle - least of all small business owners like Sarah Wells, whose company imports backpacks and other gear for nursing moms.
SARAH WELLS: We shouldn't have to become litigators just to get our money back. For small businesses like mine, that's not a small decision. It's time, legal cost and more uncertainty.
HORSLEY: Judge Eaton ordered the government to come back to court tomorrow with ideas for a streamlined refund process. Eaton notes the government already knows how much it collected from each importer under the tariffs that have been ruled illegal. He scoffed at the idea customs officials would have to sort through millions of tariff bills by hand.
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EATON: We live in the age of computers. It must be possible for the custom service to program its computer so it doesn't need a manual review.
HORSLEY: Neither the White House nor customs officials responded to NPR's questions about the refund process, but the Justice Department had already given repeated assurances that if the tariffs were struck down, the money would be returned. That's why the government was allowed to keep collecting the tariffs for nine long months after a lower court ruled they were illegal last May. Sara Albrecht, who heads the Liberty Justice Center, which took the case to the Supreme Court, says the government shouldn't be allowed to backtrack on its refund promise now.
SARA ALBRECHT: They said there is no harm because we can always refund the money, and they even included with interest. To me, it's pretty clear that they don't have a lot of room to argue that they can't pay refunds.
HORSLEY: Albrecht says the government should stop stalling and pay up, even if that means forking over more than $130 billion.
ALBRECHT: Yes. I'm not - it is an unprecedented amount of money, but maybe they should've thought about that before they levied illegal tariffs on the entire world.
HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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