Supreme Court rejects Trump’s tariffs. Could Idaho businesses get a refund?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Supreme Court rules Trump lacked authority to impose broad tariffs under IEEPA.
- An Idaho business hired a broker to preserve refund claims amid legal uncertainty.
- Court left refund question unresolved, spurring refund lawsuits and claims.
When President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs at the start of last year, Casey Ames, the founder of a small business in Boise, had to pause the shipment of an order already under production overseas because the cost to import it has skyrocketed.
Ames imagined all kinds of grim scenarios. Would he have to stop selling products in the U.S.? Would he have to lay off some employees just to get by? Would his business become unprofitable? The trade war between America and China had made importing the products his company designs and sells almost impossible.
His company, Harkla, sells products and educational content for children with special needs. The Trump administration’s tariffs threw a wrench into what was on track to be a record year for the business.
“We ended up just really going through our entire company with a fine tooth comb, and were able to get enough savings in different parts of our supply chain to kind of mitigate where the tariffs ended up at,” Ames told the Idaho Statesman on Friday. “There were a few places where we did have to start charging customers for things we didn’t use to charge for, like free shipping.”
On Friday, the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, dealing a major blow to a cornerstone of Trump’s economic agenda since returning to office for a second term.
But Ames felt little relief.
“With this administration, I have no idea how things will play out,” he said by phone. “It seems like it could just be a temporary win at best and that we might be in an endless loop of this for the next three years. This administration is just dead set on tariffs.”
Trump announces new 10% tariffs
The 6-3 Supreme Court decision said Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner without clear authorization from Congress. Trump used a 1977 law to enact the tariffs: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which allows the president to take actions to regulate commerce during a national emergency.
Trump called the high court’s decision “terrible” and heaped praise on the three dissenting justices — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — at a press conference Friday, vowing to find a way to circumvent the ruling. He announced a new 10% global tariff and said it would be effective immediately.
In particular, he said he was proud of Kavanaugh, who laid out in his dissent several other pathways to impose tariffs.
“The good news is, it’s like Justice Kavanaugh said, he said very strongly that you have other ways you can go,” Trump said. “It’s a little more complicated. The process takes a little more time. But the end result is going to get us more money, and I think it’s going to be great.”
Boise State University political scientist Ross Burkhart, who studies trade policy and happened to be in Washington, D.C., for a conference Friday, told the Idaho Statesman that the ruling marked a historic day for the legislative branch.
“It seems like almost a textbook case of separation of powers, where the Supreme Court, in rather clear language, said that it was Congress that had the power to raise duties or tariffs on goods from foreign countries, and the president simply did not have the authority that he claimed to have under the emergency law that he has been using since the Liberation Day tariffs of last April,” Burkhart said by phone.
But he said the Trump administration does indeed have avenues for placing tariffs on goods and services from other countries through various sections of trade law.
Companies sue for tariff refunds
The president had been counting on revenue from tariffs to boost the federal budget, reshore manufacturing and balance the scales with America’s trading partners. The ruling from the Supreme Court did not address whether tariffs already paid would need to be refunded, and in response to a question from a reporter about possible refunds, Trump commented that it was “crazy” that the decision didn’t address it.
In anticipation of the ruling, thousands of companies, including Costco Wholesale, have filed lawsuits with the hopes of securing refunds, USA Today reported.
“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said. “You would think they would have put one sentence in there saying to keep the money or don’t keep the money, right? I guess this is to get litigated for the next two years.”
Burkhart said he wasn’t surprised the court didn’t address the implementation of its ruling.
“It’s not typical for courts to address implementation issues,” he said. “The court would maintain that it’s just simply ruling on the legality of an action and not what the remedy or redress would be. So I’m not surprised that the Supreme Court didn’t say, ‘Oh, here’s how you claim your refund.’ It’s not really their role.”
Small Idaho business hopes for refund
Over the last year, Ames hired an import broker to ensure that his business, Harkla, is in a position to get a refund if it does become a possibility.
“We have to keep protesting every single month through our broker to leave our shipments open for refunds, and we’re having to pay our broker to do it, which is just another expense from these tariffs that we’re dealing with,” Ames said. “I would expect a refund if money was taken from my business illegally by anybody, including the government.”
Before the majority Supreme Court decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Trump administration had said a loss in the case could potentially force the federal government to dismantle trade deals with other countries and pay out billions of dollars in refunds. Customs and Border Protection has reported that the government has collected over $200 billion in tariffs since the policy was implemented at the start of 2025.
Robert Spendlove, an economist for Zions Bank in Boise, told the Statesman on Friday that he believes individual companies have a claim on the tariffs they paid to the government through the 1997 IEEPA law.
Spendlove said he could see smaller businesses banding together to file class-action lawsuits over the tariffs.
“I suspect that we’ll see more businesses filing claims now that we have the Supreme Court decision, and they’ll have to prove that they were subject to this and declare the amount that they paid and what they think they’re due,” Spendlove said by phone. “But they’re going to have to go after it on their own. You’re not going to see an administration that’s really eager to help businesses, large or small, recover these funds.”
