LEILA FADEL, HOST:
This is the day a lot of U.S. businesses have been waiting for. They can finally ask the government to give back some of the $166 billion in tariffs that it collected illegally.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Ever since the Supreme Court struck down those tariffs two months ago, importers have been wondering when they might get their money back. Customs officials have now set up an online system to process refund requests, and it is set to go live this morning.
FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now with the details. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So $166 billion. That's a lot of money that has to be repaid. How is this going to work?
HORSLEY: Yeah, it could be a scramble. You know, there's some 330,000 businesses that were wrongly forced to pay those tariffs, and a lot of them are going to be at their keyboards this morning looking for refunds. People have likened this to trying to get tickets to a hot concert or a sporting event. Jay Foreman runs a toy company that paid about $7 million in tariffs, and he is eager to get that money back.
JAY FOREMAN: I can tell you, six people in our company will be having their hand on the trigger, and we'll push that button as soon as we see it.
HORSLEY: The process is supposed to be pretty straightforward, similar to what the customs service does routinely when, say, a company overpays a tariff by mistake. But customs has never tried to repay this much money all at once.
FADEL: Does the government have the bandwidth to handle all of these requests?
HORSLEY: We will see (laughter). Hopefully, this will not be like the disastrous healthcare.gov rollout more than a dozen years ago, but there have been concerns. You know, even when the Supreme Court was hearing arguments in this case, Justice Amy Coney Barrett warned the refund process could be a mess. In fact, in its decision, the High Court did not even weigh in on whether or how refunds should be repaid. It left that up to a specialty trade court. But the judge there, Richard Eaton, did not give the government any wiggle room.
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RICHARD EATON: The law's clear. Duties were unlawful from the moment that they were imposed, and that means that every single cent of IEEPA duties must be returned to the importer.
HORSLEY: IEEPA is the law the president relied on to impose these tariffs, but the Supreme Court said the law doesn't authorize that. Afterwards, Judge Eaton brushed aside arguments that tens of millions of tariff records would have to be manually reviewed. He said, we live in the age of computers. And after some initial foot-dragging, the government has actually moved pretty quickly to set up this streamlined refund system.
FADEL: So how long is it going to take for businesses to get their money back?
HORSLEY: Refunds are expected in 60 to 90 days. Now, some businesses with older and more complicated tariff situations are going to have to wait for a later phase to submit those requests, but most are eligible in this first batch. And Judge Eaton stressed that while there is some bureaucracy to navigate here, customs knows how to do this.
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EATON: I believe that there will be no chaos associated with the provision of these refunds and that it will not result in a mess.
HORSLEY: Toy importer Jay Foreman is also cautiously optimistic. He figures there might be some computer glitches, but ultimately, he's pretty confident his company will get the money as owed.
FOREMAN: The Supreme Court of the United States of America and the Court of International Trade have said these tariffs are illegal, the money was taken illegally and it needs to be refunded. And I firmly believe that will happen one way or another over time.
HORSLEY: By the way, after the Supreme Court struck down the president's emergency tariffs, the administration imposed new tariffs using a different law. Those are generally lower and they're also time limited, but those new tariffs are also being challenged in court, and Jay Foreman is a part of that case.
FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott, for your reporting.
HORSLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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