Businesses Face Financial Pressure While Waiting for Tariff Refunds

Last April, President Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” in imposing new tariffs.

Nearly one year later, many American businesses are feeling anything but liberated, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (March 31).

As that report noted, companies of all sizes are grappling with uncertainty surrounding when or if they will get their share of refunds from the $166 billion the administration collected, a process later deemed illegal by the Supreme Court.

Upwards of 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against the government in the Court of International Trade by businesses hoping for a refund. While some of these plaintiffs include high-profile companies like CVS and Costco, most are small businesses.

Other companies can’t afford to go to court, the report added. Among them is Endless Pens, a Florida-based luxury online retailer waiting on refunds of the $175,000 in tariffs it paid on imports. If that refund doesn’t arrive by July, the company could have to declare bankruptcy, owner Keval Kantaria told the WSJ.

“I’ve come to a cash flow crisis,” he said. “I don’t have enough cash to buy any new inventory.”

White House officials have said in court that it could take the government up to 4.4 million hours to manually process the various refund requests, but noted that computer upgrades designed to speed that effort could be ready by mid-April, substantially reducing the 4.4 million estimate.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this month about another lesson for businesses offered by the tariffs. Many companies, the report said, have not fully allowed suppliers to provide the structured data and documentation needed 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.”

With no centralized system for supplier documentation in place, the need to submit effective and compliant refund claims can soon become a manual and time-consuming effort and ultimately lead to lost recoveries, the report added.

“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.”

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