IEEPA tariffs got struck down and refunded to importers — but us small retailers who absorbed the cost downstream never see any of it
Small business owner here - my husband and I run an independent garden center in Montana. Wanted to share something I think a lot of small retailers are dealing with but maybe haven’t put into words yet.
Back in Feb 2026, the Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs from 2025 were never legal. Since then, CBP has been refunding those tariffs - billions of dollars - but only to the importer of record. That’s usually not us. It’s our suppliers.
Here’s the thing: we never paid those tariffs directly, but we absolutely paid for them. Our supplier costs went up when the tariffs hit, and they got passed straight to us on invoices. Retail margins don’t have room to just eat a tariff and mark it up the normal amount - doubling shelf prices isn’t something customers are going to tolerate. So we ate it. Quietly, for almost two years, out of our own margin.
Now the tariffs are gone and the money’s flowing back… straight to the importers. Unless a supplier decides on their own to pass some of that refund downstream, retailers like us just eat the loss twice - once when the tariff hit, once when the refund doesn’t trickle down.
We sent a letter to our own suppliers asking straightforward questions: did tariffs apply to what you sold us, have you filed for/received a refund, and will any of that show up in our pricing or as a credit. Not accusing anyone of bad faith - this refund process is brand new and still tangled in appeals - but it felt worth asking directly instead of assuming it’ll just happen.
Curious if other small retailers/wholesalers are seeing the same thing, or if anyone’s actually gotten a supplier to pass a refund back. Feels like something more of us should be asking about.