Refund Chaos Looms If High Court Affirms US Tariffs Illegal (1)

President Donald Trump has warned of disaster if the Supreme Court overturns his signature tariffs. For starters, it would unleash a bureaucratic nightmare involving reams of refund paper checks.

Should the court uphold a US Court of Appeals ruling that Trump’s country-based tariffs are illegal, the government could owe the bulk of the $165 billion in customs duties collected so far this fiscal year back to companies that paid them. But they won’t have an easy time getting their money back; refunds are typically issued slowly with paper checks and while the administration could streamline the process to repay the ...