\n<\/p>\n
The US supreme court recently struck down Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs, opening the door to up to $175bn in refunds for businesses that paid the import taxes. However, the process for claiming that money is by no means certain. Trump himself said that the issue could be tied up in courts \u201cfor the next five years\u201d.<\/p>\n
Across the country, small businesses have struggled to navigate the fallout from Trump\u2019s global tariff wars. The Guardian asked small business owners in the US how their lives and livelihoods have been affected.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Vitanza, who runs a lighting and home furnishings company in Los Angeles with her husband, John Ballon, said that all of the modern brands they work with have raised prices at least 12% over the past year.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of this is pro-business or pro-American,\u201d Vitanza said.<\/p>\n
When Trump won re-election in 2024, Vitanza and Ballon immediately put in a large order with one of their Swedish brand partners, \u201cin the hopes that they could rush production\u201d before tariffs kicked in, she said. They still got hit with a five-figure tariff on the order.<\/p>\n
Ballon said: \u201cThe money that we had set aside to renovate our showroom, to maybe increase people\u2019s salaries \u2013 to do things that businesses do with money that they budget for \u2013 suddenly was now being cut into in substantial and unexpected ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would anyone start a business right now?\u201d Vitanza asked. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t if I didn\u2019t have a firmly established one.\u201d<\/p>\n
A furniture maker in Texas, who asked to remain anonymous, said that \u201cthe tariffs have raised the price of imported lumber \u2013 which can\u2019t be grown domestically \u2013 and on cabinet hardware, which is not manufactured in the United States\u201d. Due to the increase in material cost, he had no choice but to raise prices.<\/p>\n
Rob Coughlin, who manages a small Minnesota-based outdoor gear company, Granite Gear, said the company has faced near-daily uncertainty since 2025\u2019s \u201cliberation day\u201d. Prior to the tariff implementation, the company paid a 18% duty fee, which then jumped to 46% after Trump\u2019s announcement of reciprocal tariffs. In August, following negotiations with Vietnam, the US lowered the tariff to 20%.<\/p>\n
In the spring of last year, when the company met retailers, panic set in. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what our pricing would be when we were going to start flowing product,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do I go to REI with pricing when I don\u2019t even know what [it\u2019s] going to be?\u201d<\/p>\n
When chatting with other, larger brands in the space, Coughlin said: \u201cTheir strategy was to push back on pricing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted: \u201cSmall brands like us, we just don\u2019t have that leverage.\u201d The company ultimately raised its prices roughly 10 to 20%.<\/p>\n
Dr Charlie Elrod, who founded a company that makes natural health products for livestock, tried to push off raising prices for as long as he could.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tariffs, especially those on Brazil, have raised our costs by about $1m in the last year,\u201d he wrote. After six months of eating the cost, the company increased prices 5%. \u201cThat helped some, but our profitability is definitely lower this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Both before and after the supreme court ruling, more than 1,000 companies filed lawsuits against the government over its tariff policy. On Wednesday, a US trade court judge ordered the government to begin paying billions of dollars in refunds to importers who paid tariffs that the court said were collected illegally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are tracking the tariffs in a spreadsheet in the hopes that one day we will have our ducks in a row to be able to file a claim for a reimbursement,\u201d Vitanza said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not counting on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked if he\u2019s attempting to get a refund, Howard Trenholme, a bakery and cafe owner based in Moab, Utah, said that he had \u201cnot even considered\u201d it as a possibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe complexity and need for legal services likely offsets the remote possibility of a refund as an end user buying through various vendors in a chain,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Coughlin expressed similar sentiments: \u201cWhen I look at the money that I would get refunded versus the possible legal fees \u2026 it could really hurt me in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI will not try to claim a refund, as this administration has shown that it is duplicitous in its dealing with the American people and any attempt to collect will be a waste of time and money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US supreme court recently struck down Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs, opening the door to up to $175bn in refunds for businesses that paid the import taxes. However, the process for claiming that money is by no means certain. Trump himself said that the issue could be tied up in courts \u201cfor the next five years\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[303,160,4747,23685,819,15734,98,159,72,13781,81,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-46311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-doubt","11":"tag-invalidates","12":"tag-owners","13":"tag-refunds","14":"tag-small","15":"tag-supreme","16":"tag-tariffs","17":"tag-theyll","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}