$166bn in Tariff Refunds Is on a Clock, and 40% of Food Importer Claims Are Being Rejected

Food and drink firms won the biggest tariff case in fifty years back in February. Six months on, plenty of them still have not been paid. Close to four in ten early refund claims came back rejected.

What the court did

On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court struck down the tariffs set under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The vote was 6 to 3. The court noted that in fifty years of that law, no president had ever used it to set tariffs.

The US Treasury had already taken in $133bn under those duties. Customs opened a refund portal on 20 April. It is set to work through $166bn in phases, paid out as single payments, with interest where it applies.

The money is real. Getting it back is a paper race.

The 80-day clock

A firm has 80 days from the moment customs finalises the duty on a shipment. File inside that window or lose the right to a refund. After that, the only road left is court.

The clock runs per shipment. It does not run per company. Customs can revise an entry within 90 days under its own rules, so the 80 days leaves a ten-day buffer.

Before any of that, a firm needs a live trade account with customs. One client set one up in fifteen minutes. Another waited two months. Every day, more shipments fall out of the window, and the cash goes with them.

Large groups keep lawyers on retainer. Mid-size food and drink firms often do not. A wave of advisers has moved in, and some have asked for up to 30% of the refund.

The new wall has no refund door

The White House moved to other trade laws: sections 122, 201 and 301. Section 122 caps out at 15% and is meant to be short-lived. The trade court threw out the global version of it.

Even so, there is no general refund route under section 122. A firm that paid has to sue to get the money back. The new tariffs come with no refund door at all.

In late July the US trade office went further. It set duties of 10% to 12.5% on 59 trading partners. The stated reason is that they do too little about forced labour. The Colorado attorney general puts the wider count at 80 countries, or 99.4% of all US imports.

Twenty-five state attorneys general sued in the first week of August. The trade court has named a three-judge panel to hear it. Section 301 is the harder law to beat. It sits on a formal investigation. Trade lawyers flagged months ago that it rests on firmer ground than the emergency route.

This lands on buying rather than legal

The forced labour framing changes who owns the problem. A country duty is a map question. A forced labour duty is a supplier question, and it reaches down to the mills and farms your suppliers use.

Metals sit in the middle of it. A former Nestlé trade compliance chief points at packaging as the most exposed part of many food firms. Cans, lids, closures, kegs and plant kit all carry steel, tin and aluminium.

A soup canner or a sparkling water brand can be more exposed through its packaging than through its recipe. Buying local does not fix it either, because domestic can makers pass on the cost of imported metal.

What to watch next

The EU looks set to sit this round out rather than hit back. China and Brazil have not shown their hand. A proposed 25% duty on Brazilian goods leaves out coffee, beef and some fruit for now. The coverage can still move.

One survey of 250 small firms found 90% are holding off on investment because of trade doubt. That is the wider cost. Trade cost is now a moving number in every contract you sign.

For buyers and investors the practical point is simpler. A refund claim is money owed to you, so treat it like any other debt on the books. In a carve-out or a bolt-on, ask whether the claims went in on time. If the window closed, the seller burned cash that was sitting there to be collected.