Legal battle over tariffs is turning into a major business risk
The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court of February 20, 2026, which established that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, known as IEEPA, cannot be used as a legal basis for imposing broad tariffs, did not calm the market. On the contrary, it opened a new period of legal, financial, and operational uncertainty for thousands of companies that import goods into the United States, but also for their suppliers, customers, and investors. In practice, it has become clear that the business world is no longer asking only how high the tariff on a specific product will be, but also who will ultimately bear the cost, who is entitled to a refund, how long the procedure will take, and whether Washington will in the meantime find a new legal basis for a new package of levies.
In the case
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Supreme Court concluded that the president does not have the authority under IEEPA to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited scope. This dismantled the framework on which the additional levies introduced during 2025 and at the beginning of 2026 had been based. Yet the decision, however important it may be, did not provide a clear operational answer to the key question now troubling companies: how to recover the money already paid and within what time frame. It is precisely here that a space has emerged in which legal uncertainty is turning into a serious business risk, because planning procurement, contracts, inventories, and prices cannot be separated from court deadlines, customs procedures, and possible new political decisions.
From legal victory to procedural chaos
At first glance, the ruling appears to be a major victory for importers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, has already announced that it is ceasing the collection of IEEPA tariffs, and on March 4 the U.S. Court of International Trade, CIT, ordered that the disputed levies be removed from calculation procedures and that refunds be enabled. But that step immediately opened up a new field of problems. The customs system is not technically ready for the mass processing of such refunds, and the state and the private sector are now facing the question of how to implement the decision at all across tens of millions of individual import entries.
According to statements that CBP submitted to the court at the beginning of March, more than 330 thousand importers and more than 53 million affected customs entries are involved. The estimate of the U.S. authorities is that around 166 billion dollars were collected through those tariffs. That figure alone is enough to explain why the legal outcome did not bring immediate relief. In theory, the court decision says that the tariffs were collected without a valid legal basis. In practice, however, a mechanism still has to be established to determine which shipments are covered, whether their calculations are legally final, how interest is to be calculated, and who must submit an additional claim.
This is why legal uncertainty has become as important as trade policy itself. For importers, it is no longer enough to follow decisions of the White House, but also court interpretations, CBP guidance, deadlines for protests, and the technical requirements of electronic refunds. Companies that over the past year tried to protect margins by raising prices, reducing orders, or changing supply chains must now simultaneously decide whether to aggressively seek refunds, wait for automatic processing, or initiate separate proceedings to protect their rights.
Why refunds are not a simple calculation
From a legal standpoint, the most important question is who actually has a direct right to a refund. In the U.S. customs system, that is, as a rule, the importer recorded in the documentation, not the final customer who may have indirectly paid a higher product price. This is precisely why, after the court decision, a new wave of lawsuits and pressure on large companies appeared. Some consumers argue that households ultimately bore the burden of the tariffs, because retailers built the higher costs into retail prices. But the legal logic of the customs system does not automatically follow that economic logic, so a gap has opened between the formal right to a refund and the real question of who actually bore the cost.
That difference is already creating new disputes. In retail and logistics, demands are emerging from customers and business partners that companies should not keep refunds only for themselves if they had previously passed the customs cost on to the market. This raises the sensitive question of so-called double recovery: can a company keep a refund from the state if part or all of the burden has already been passed on to the customer. Legally, the answer is not unequivocal and will depend on contracts, pricing policy, evidence, and individual relationships within the supply chain. In business terms, however, the damage has already been done, because even companies that prevailed in the core dispute are now facing a new wave of risk, including class actions, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational pressure.
An additional problem is the fact that not all refunds apply equally to all tariffs. Court decisions and CBP instructions apply to IEEPA levies, but not to other trade instruments such as tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act or Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. For the business sector, this means that it is not a matter of a single reset of the trade regime, but of a complex reshuffling in which part of the costs may be refunded, while part remains in force. In other words, companies cannot simply calculate a new input price as if the problem had been resolved, because they still have to monitor multiple parallel regimes.
Temporary abolition of one regime, preparation of another
The greatest source of nervousness for the economy is not only the question of refunds, but the possibility that the U.S. administration will very quickly replace the struck-down tariffs with new measures. And that is precisely what is already happening. On the very day the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, the White House reached for another legal basis and declared a temporary additional import surcharge of 10 percent under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That mechanism is time-limited to 150 days, and according to the published rules it has applied since February 24, 2026, to a broad range of imports, with certain exceptions.
That means companies received both good and bad news in the same week. The good news is that one set of tariffs fell in court. The bad news is that a new transitional regime was established almost immediately, and the administration is simultaneously preparing more permanent measures. The U.S. Trade Representative has already been instructed to examine, through procedures under Section 301, new grounds for additional tariffs, including issues of production surpluses and other trade practices that Washington considers harmful to the U.S. economy. For companies, this practically means that the court abolished one legal construction, but did not remove the political intention itself to use tariffs as an instrument of industrial and trade policy.
That is precisely why managers, chief financial officers, and legal teams are today working on two tracks. On the first, they are trying to recover money they consider to have been unlawfully collected. On the second, they are already building into their plans the possibility that part of the costs will soon return through a new regime. Such a situation makes it harder to make decisions on contracts concluded for six months, a year, or longer. If a company assumes that it will receive a significant refund and therefore lowers prices, and then the refund is delayed or new levies cancel out the expected savings, the margin can collapse suddenly. If, on the other hand, it keeps higher prices to protect itself, it risks a drop in competitiveness and a loss of market share.
Why the financial risk spills through the entire chain
The business problem is not limited only to large importers. Tariffs and the uncertainty around them spill through the entire supply chain, from manufacturers, shippers, and distributors to retail and end customers. When the legal status of tariffs remains open, all participants in the chain begin building in their own protective surcharge. The supplier wants a higher safety margin, the carrier wants more flexible clauses, the trader wants the ability to adjust prices more quickly, and the customer delays orders or asks for discounts. In this way, legal uncertainty becomes an inflationary force in itself, even before it is known exactly how high future levies will be.
A particular problem is posed by contracts in which it is not precisely defined who bears extraordinary trade costs. Companies are now rapidly revising clauses on change of law, force majeure, customs adjustments, and cost allocation. Where such provisions do not exist, the possibility of commercial disputes is growing among partners who until yesterday believed they had a stable relationship. In that sense, the U.S. court battle over tariffs is also becoming a global problem, because it affects exporters from Europe, Asia, and Latin America who sell goods into the United States and are trying to assess how U.S. buyers will react to new waves of costs.
Markets, meanwhile, do not like situations in which it is difficult to distinguish the temporary from the permanent. If the rate is 10 percent today, but there is a possibility that in a few months it will again be higher and structured differently, companies will prefer to plan conservatively. That means less investment, more postponement, and more cautious hiring. For international trade, this is bad news, because legal ambiguity acts as an additional obstacle even when the formal tariff rate is not at its peak.
What companies are now doing in concrete terms
According to estimates by legal and tax advisers who follow U.S. trade practice, companies are currently keeping three parallel records. The first relates to historical payments of IEEPA tariffs and the assessment of potential refunds. The second covers active shipments and new costs under the temporary regime of Section 122. The third relates to scenarios for the summer of 2026, when the temporary surcharge could expire, be extended by political decision, or be replaced by more targeted measures after new investigations.
In that process, technical details that at first glance seem secondary also play an important role. CBP told the court that it can process refunds electronically and that a large number of affected importers have not yet even been included in the appropriate electronic system. For companies, this means that the issue of refunds is not resolved only in the courtroom but also in administrative preparation, from aligning documentation to checking the status of old customs calculations. In other words, financial recovery depends equally on legal strategy and on the ability of operational teams to prepare data quickly.
Large companies have a certain advantage here because they have in-house lawyers, customs specialists, and external advisers. Small and medium-sized importers are in a much more difficult position. They often do not have the resources for lengthy proceedings, and uncertainty hits them harder because even a smaller disruption in cash flow can affect procurement, inventories, and creditworthiness. That is why it is increasingly emphasized in business circles that the problem is not only the level of tariffs but the unpredictability of the regime in which companies operate.
The political message remains the same, the legal foundations are changing
From Washington’s perspective, the administration’s message has not changed: tariffs remain a tool intended to protect domestic production, reduce the trade deficit, and pressure partners in negotiations. What has changed is the legal path by which that goal is being pursued. The Supreme Court clearly limited the possibility that extraordinary presidential powers could be used for the broad imposition of tariffs, but in doing so it did not prohibit the use of other legal instruments. That is precisely why the market is reading this ruling not as the end of the tariff era, but as the beginning of a new phase in which every future levy will be exposed to an even more detailed legal and political test.
After the ruling, the National Retail Federation said that the decision brings much-needed clarity on the limits of executive power, but for businesses that clarity remains only partial for now. The boundary of one authority has been drawn, but it is not clear what the final cost effect of the new web of temporary tariffs, investigations, and possible future decisions will be. Because of that, scenario planning, securing contractual positions, and caution in estimating prices for the second half of the year are becoming increasingly important in the economy.
In the end, it is becoming clear that the greatest business risk may no longer be the tariff rate itself, but the duration of the legal chaos surrounding it. While courts, customs authorities, and the executive branch search for a sustainable model for refunds and new levies, companies must do business as if every cost were temporary, but also as if it could become permanent tomorrow. In such an environment, legal certainty becomes a commodity almost as valuable as market access, and the tariff issue grows from a trade topic into a central question of corporate governance, cash flow, and global competitiveness.
Sources:- U.S. Supreme Court – decision in the case Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump of February 20, 2026, which established that IEEPA does not give the president the authority to impose broad tariffs (link)
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection – notice on the cessation of collection of IEEPA tariffs and the deactivation of related tariff codes from February 24, 2026 (link)
- Associated Press – report that CBP is seeking about 45 days to establish a refund system, with an estimate of about 166 billion dollars and more than 330 thousand affected importers (link)
- White House – presidential proclamation and accompanying overview of the temporary additional import surcharge of 10 percent under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (link)
- CBP CSMS – technical instructions on the application of temporary tariffs under Section 122, including the start of application on February 24, 2026, and the period of 150 days (link)
- National Retail Federation – retail sector reaction to the Supreme Court decision and the assessment that the ruling is important for clarity on the limits of executive power in trade policy (link)
- Wharton Budget Model – analysis of the fiscal effect of the ruling and procedural issues regarding possible tariff refunds (link)
- Business Insider – example of new disputes after the ruling, including demands that any refunds not be retained only by importers, but that part of the benefit also be passed on to customers (link)
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