The Scramble Is On for Businesses to Get Their Tariff Refund Checks

What It Covers

Following the Supreme Court's invalidation of IEEPA tariffs, Ryan Petersen of Flexport explains how US businesses can recover tariff payments, why refunds are near-certain to materialize in 2024, how a secondary market for tariff claims is forming, and what supply chain shifts have occurred since Liberation Day.

Key Questions Answered

• •Tariff refund certainty: Three independent international trade attorneys told Petersen there is 100% certainty refunds will be issued following the Supreme Court ruling. The DOJ itself filed a motion during appellate proceedings explicitly stating refunds would follow if the government lost — creating a binding precedent that makes denial extremely difficult for any judge to justify.
• •Secondary market pricing: Tariff refund claims are actively trading between banks and large companies. Claims traded at 25 cents on the dollar before the Supreme Court ruling and jumped to 52 cents on the same day. Companies holding claims worth $10M+ are being approached by at least three buyer groups, with many sellers willing to accept 60–70 cents for immediate liquidity.
• •How to calculate your refund: Importers of record can access their full customs entry history through the US Customs ACE system. Uploading that ACE report to tariffs.flexport.com generates an automatic calculation of total refund owed. Approximately 70 Fortune 500 companies initiated this process within one week of the ruling, with refunds expected to include 6% annualized interest.
• •Foreign importer loophole: Since Liberation Day, the share of US trade using a foreign importer of record jumped from 9% to 20%. Many US companies shifted purchasing to foreign entities to obscure declared values and reduce dutiable amounts — a practice Petersen identifies as widespread fraud that also means those US companies receive zero refund eligibility since they never formally imported anything.
• •Section 122 tariff limits: The replacement 10% tariff invoked under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 carries two hard legal constraints: a 15% maximum rate and a 150-day maximum duration, expiring around July 20. Trade lawyers advise that simply re-issuing the tariff after expiration would not survive a legal challenge, making the post-July tariff landscape genuinely uncertain.