White House Warns of Lengthy Tariff Refund Timeline

As the New York Times (NYT) reported Thursday (March 12), the administration has said in court that it could take the government up to 4.4 million hours to manually process the various refund requests.

The government’s estimate showed more than 53 million entries that were subject to the $166 billion in tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down last month. The justices found that President Donald Trump had no authority to issue tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA)

In court last week, the NYT report noted, a U.S. customs official said that computer upgrades designed to facilitate refunds could be “ready for use” by the middle of next month, substantially reducing the 4.4 million hour-time frame.

Terence Lau, the dean of the College of Law at Syracuse University and a former lawyer for Ford Motor, said that while the refund process was complex enough to take some time, government court filings also demonstrate “they are trying to narrow who gets refunds, and they’re stretching the timeline.”

Thousands of businesses have taken the government to court to recover losses from the tariffs, including high-profile companies like Nintendo and FedEx. Consumers, meanwhile, have begun to sue businesses seeking reimbursement for tariff-related price increases.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about another lesson for businesses offered by the tariffs. Many companies, the report said, have not fully enabled suppliers to provide the structured data and documentation required to substantiate complex trade claims.

“The coming tariff refund wave may, as a result, become an unexpected stress test for supplier enablement,” that report said. “The companies that recover tariff money fastest may be the ones that already solved a broader B2B challenge: enabling suppliers to deliver structured compliance data on demand.”

Without a centralized system for supplier documentation, the need to submit effective and compliant refund claims can quickly become manual and time-consuming effort and ultimately lead to lost recoveries.

“Companies that can quickly assemble the necessary supplier records may be able to file claims earlier and resolve them faster,” PYMNTS wrote. “Those that cannot may find themselves racing to collect documentation from suppliers months after the original transactions.”