The news on his phone left Richard Brown so stunned he stumbled past the exit of the bagel shop where he was grabbing breakfast. Then he couldn’t find his car in the parking lot. On that February day, the Supreme Court had struck down most of President Trump’s tariffs — tariffs business owners like Brown had been paying for almost a year. He wondered: how would U.S. Customs refund duties it had illegally collected, and when might he get his money back?
Brown recorded an audio diary of his efforts and shared it with NPR. His experience illustrates a wider problem trade experts are worrying about: thousands of U.S. businesses may never recover the billions in tariff dollars the government promised to return.
Brown runs Proof Culture from his Ohio home with a friend and occasional help from his father. The sneaker-accessory business sells laces, cleaner, storage boxes and other gear. They began importing three years ago and estimate Customs owes them up to $25,000 in refunds — roughly 10% of last year’s revenue. For them, it’s not life-changing but it matters for inventory and advertising.
Like many small importers, Proof Culture relied on suppliers, freight forwarders and carriers to handle shipping and customs. Paying the tariffs had been easy; getting them back is not. After the court decision, the Trump administration rolled out replacement tariffs and new fees, complicating records. Brown spent weeks digitizing purchase orders, assembling invoices and building an AI tool to track shipments. He left voicemails for freight forwarders and chased missing paperwork.
U.S. Customs said it would build an online portal so importers could claim refunds without suing. That sounded promising, but it shifted the burden onto businesses that often lacked customs expertise. Brown watched webinars and learned the portal but felt overwhelmed. “We’re not equipped to deal with this,” he said in his diary. “This wasn’t my problem. And now you’re telling me if I want my money back, figure it out.”
Customs told a court the portal would handle most shipments, but that presumes importers are ready to file claims. More than two-thirds were not. When the portal launched on April 20, many small businesses reported technical errors, trouble logging in, long hold times with Customs and other barriers. Customs later said it had rejected more than a third of filed claims for technical or data errors (claimants can refile) and had accepted claims covering about one-fifth of the shipments for which refunds are due.
Libertarian trade analysts warned that because the process is not automated or instantaneous, the federal government could end up keeping tens of billions of dollars it should return. Large, prolific importers moved quickly to claim refunds or sued preemptively. Smaller firms like Proof Culture face a harder path: they must gather fragmented paperwork, learn a new portal, and decide whether the time spent chasing refunds is worth diverting from running the business.
Brown and his partner are still preparing to file. He describes juggling tax season, family matters and daily business fires while trying to assemble a claim. “It’s money, and every dime matters for a small business,” he says. But he also wonders whether the effort will pay off, and whether many other small importers will simply walk away — leaving billions in refunds effectively unrecovered.