The Scramble Is On for Businesses to Get Their Tariff Refund Checks
Episode
44 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Investing, Philosophy & Wisdom, Economics & Policy
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓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.
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.
Notable Moment
Petersen revealed that Chinese ecommerce companies like Shein have quietly built US fulfillment networks now estimated at roughly 20% the scale of Amazon's logistics infrastructure — an almost entirely unreported development that continued expanding even after the de minimis exemption ended.
Episode Transcript
UKG. Their HR, pay, and workforce management tools help business leaders empower their people. Because when work works, everything works. Learn more at ukg.com/work. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the smarter way to manage your money internationally. If you're getting a headache from juggling different currencies and different bank accounts in different countries, there's a better way to receive money in the currency you need without the slow transfer times or hidden fees. Meet Wise, the savvy way to handle your money internationally. Hold balances in up to 40 currencies with the mid market exchange rate on every conversion. Whether you're receiving payments from tenants abroad, earning as a digital nomad, or converting dividends from your international investments, the Wyze multicurrency account is for you. Be smart. Get Wyze. Download the Wyze app today or visit wyze.com. Terms and conditions apply. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. Do you think you and I are gonna start getting checks because they struck down the tariffs. Right? And according to economists, consumers pay the tariff. So if consumers pay the tariffs and they strike down the refund, shouldn't we get the money? I have often said, Joe, I buy a lot of stuff Yeah. Especially from abroad. A lot of weird stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm running a small logistics company. Yeah. And I will say so I know it's the importer of record who actually pays the tariffs and is supposedly supposed to get the refund. Uh-huh. However, I've had a few instances where, like, the postal service will deliver something to my house, especially in Connecticut. And while they're there, we'll say you owe us, like, $50 in cash as a tariff payment. And I'm literally standing on my door Really? Paying out cash, and it's going somewhere. So I feel very much like I actually have paid the tariffs pretty much directly to the Trump government. Like, there is something very visceral. I have some bad news to to I know. I know. The person who did that was a con artist who showed up. Wasn't. It wasn't. Said and they they duped you into thinking that because I have never heard of someone having to make cash. You're not buy you're not buying enough from abroad. No. It's definitely true. I got the bill online, and then you …
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“Importers of record can access their full customs entry history through the US Customs ACE system.”
- tariffs.flexport.comBy guest
by Flexport
“Uploading that ACE report to tariffs.flexport.com generates an automatic calculation of total refund owed.”
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