When Richard Brown read the Supreme Court ruling on his phone that February morning, he was so stunned he walked past the exit of the bagel shop where he’d stopped for breakfast. Later he couldn’t find his car in the parking lot. The decision struck down most of President Trump’s tariffs — levies dozens of U.S. businesses had been paying for nearly a year — and left Brown wondering how and when U.S. Customs would return the duties it had collected.
Brown co-runs Proof Culture, a sneaker-accessory business in Ohio that sells laces, cleaners and storage boxes. The company began importing three years ago; they estimate Customs owes them up to $25,000 in refunds, roughly 10% of last year’s revenue. That amount isn’t life-changing but matters for inventory and marketing. Like many small importers, Proof Culture relied on suppliers, freight forwarders and carriers to handle shipping and customs. Paying the tariffs had been straightforward. Getting the money back has not.
After the court’s decision, the administration introduced replacement tariffs and new fees, which muddied records and complicated refund calculations. Brown spent weeks digitizing purchase orders, compiling invoices and even building an AI tool to trace shipments. He left voicemails for freight forwarders, chased elusive paperwork and juggled tax season and family obligations while trying to prepare a claim.
Customs said it would create an online portal so importers could claim refunds without going to court. The portal was intended to simplify the process, but in practice it shifted the burden onto businesses that often lack customs expertise. Brown watched webinars and learned the system but felt overwhelmed. “We’re not equipped to deal with this,” he recorded in an audio 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 assumed importers were ready to file. More than two-thirds were not. When the portal opened on April 20, many small firms encountered technical errors, login problems, long waits on helplines and other hurdles. Customs later reported it had rejected more than a third of submitted claims for technical or data errors (claimants can refile) and had accepted claims covering only about one-fifth of the shipments for which refunds are due.
Trade analysts warned the result could be stark: because the process is neither automated nor instantaneous, the federal government could end up retaining tens of billions of dollars it should return. Big, high-volume importers moved quickly, hiring specialists or suing to secure refunds. Smaller companies like Proof Culture face a harder calculation: assemble fragmented paperwork, master a new portal and spend hours away from running the business — or walk away and forfeit the refund.
Brown and his partner are still preparing to file. He describes balancing daily business emergencies with paperwork and wondering whether the time spent chasing a refund will pay off. “It’s money, and every dime matters for a small business,” he says in his diary. Yet he also worries many others will simply give up — leaving billions effectively unrecovered and shifting the burden of a legal ruling onto the very businesses it was meant to protect.