Trump Admin Seeks Months-Long Pause on Tariff Refunds

Lawyers for the Justice Department warned that ’the coming process will take time.’

Ships are docked at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif., on Feb. 20, 2026. Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo

The Trump administration says it needs months of additional time to weigh its steps, as a wave of refund requests pours in from importers seeking billions of dollars in tariffs recently struck down by the Supreme Court.

In a late-night Feb. 27 filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to delay for roughly four months before taking a procedural step that would begin refund proceedings.

The request comes as businesses line up to seek reimbursement for tariffs they had paid—money now in limbo after the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he used an emergency power to impose global tariffs aimed at reducing trade deficits.

Although the justices invalidated the tariff regime, they did not lay out a detailed road map for what should happen next, or how the government should handle the tens of billions of dollars already collected.

In its filing, the DOJ urged the Federal Circuit to wait until the Supreme Court’s judgment is finalized, a process that can take 32 days. After that, it requested an additional 90-day delay to “allow the political branches an opportunity to consider options.”

DOJ lawyers also pushed back at the companies pressing to restart refund litigation at the U.S. Court of International Trade as soon as possible, accusing their attorneys of seeking an accelerated schedule out of an “apparent desire to be the center of attention” in the proceedings.

“Complexity in the future counsels appropriately careful process, not breakneck speed,” the government wrote, arguing that a delay would not irreparably harm importers because monetary losses can be remedied through repayment with interest.

Although it acknowledged that a refund process is likely to follow its loss at the Supreme Court, the DOJ warned that “the coming process will take time.”

To underscore that point, DOJ cited a 1998 mass refund dispute over a harbor maintenance tax. In that case, American importers won a $730 million refund in the Court of International Trade, but it took years for the government to fully distribute the money, and the DOJ emphasized that the Trump tariff case involves a substantially larger sum.

The DOJ did not say it plans to ask the Supreme Court to rehear the case. Trump has said he intends to explore the option.

“It doesn’t make sense that Countries and Companies that took advantage of us for decades, receiving Billions and Billions of Dollars that they should not have been allowed to receive, would now be entitled to an undeserved ‘windfall,’ the likes of which the World has never seen before, as a result of this highly disappointing, to say the least, ruling,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier on Feb. 27.

“Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???”

Similar concerns were echoed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote in his dissenting opinion that “refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury.”

“The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers,“ Kavanaugh wrote. ”That process is likely to be a ‘mess,’ as was acknowledged at oral argument.”