More Than 1,000 Companies Are Suing Trump Over His Tariffs

With the US Supreme Court poised to decide the fate of most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs as soon as Friday, hundreds of companies already are lined up hoping to recoup their share of the billions of dollars in duties paid so far.

After months on the sidelines, a flood of businesses spanning the global economy sued in the weeks since the justices signalled scepticism of Trump’s signature trade policy during a Nov. 5 hearing. More than 1,000 corporate entities are now involved in the legal fight, court records show, teeing up an unprecedented struggle over what happens next if the administration loses.

A ruling against the president’s novel use of a 1977 emergency powers law will kick off a fresh round of wrangling over who is eligible to get their money back and how that process will work. Trump warned in a November social media post that being forced to pay refunds “would be a National Security catastrophe.”

“We have a big Supreme Court case. I hope they do what’s good for our country. I hope they do the right thing. The president has to be able to wheel and deal with tariffs,” Trump said Tuesday in remarks to House Republicans.

Even if the Supreme Court declares the tariffs unlawful, the justices are likely to leave the question of refunds to lower courts. If the US Court of International Trade — the primary forum for these legal fights — ultimately manages that process, any importer that wants its money back must sue. The administration had collected approximately $133 billion in duties under the emergency authority as of Dec. 14, according to its latest report.

The first time the Supreme Court will release opinions this year is Friday, but the justices don’t announce the cases in advance so it’s not clear if that includes a decision on tariffs.

In April, just a few small businesses and a coalition of states filed the original tariff challenges that are now before the Supreme Court. They contest Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs aimed at addressing trade deficits and separate levies meant to thwart fentanyl trafficking. The recent flurry of filings piggyback on those earlier cases.

By Jan. 6, at least 914 cases were filed — almost all since November. The total number of companies involved is larger, because some complaints feature multiple corporate entities that individually paid levies on goods entering the country.

Tariff Lawsuits Skyrocket After Supreme Court Arguments

Publicly traded companies, including Costco Wholesale Corp., EssilorLuxottica SA, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., are among the stampede of companies suing for refunds. In the first days of 2026 alone, dozens of entities, including Dole Fresh Fruit Co., E.l.f. Cosmetics Inc. and J. Crew Group LLC, have sued.

“They’re all leaping on the bandwagon,” said John Vecchione, senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a group that fights what it sees as government overreach and was involved early on in tariff litigation. “I’m glad they are, but I wish they had been there at the beginning.”

The plaintiffs now include subsidiaries of large domestic and overseas firms, such as US aluminium producer Alcoa Corp., Japanese auto parts sellers Yokohama Rubber Co. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Chinese solar company LONGi Green Energy Technology Co.

Household brands are also lining up: sneaker sellers Reebok and Puma, apparel purveyor Tommy John, camera maker GoPro, personal care producers Schick and Playtex, beauty mainstays Revlon and Conair, and pantry staples Bumble Bee and Del Monte Fresh Produce.

“You almost need to sue just to make your voice heard,” Hans Heim, chief executive officer of Ibis Cycles Inc. in Santa Cruz, California, said in an interview. “I think everybody is afraid of drawing attention to themselves and having the wrath of the government come down on them one way or the other.”

Ibis, which imports parts from Vietnam and Taiwan to build high-end bikes, including at one of their factories in the US, paid $800,000 in tariffs in 2025. The company filed suit Dec. 4.

During the November hearing, key members of the Supreme Court expressed skepticism that Trump had authority to rely on the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the global tariffs. Still, it remains possible that the conservative majority, which repeatedly has backed the administration, could uphold Trump’s tariff policies.

Erik Smithweiss, a trade lawyer handling many of the new tariff cases, said some companies, particularly those with higher public profiles were wary of “political blowback” for leading the charge when the tariffs took effect in the spring. He declined to share company names.

For others, politics wasn’t a top concern but they wanted to wait and see how arguments went at the Supreme Court, he said.

Some businesses are still reluctant to go up against the Trump administration, Smithweiss said, but as the end of the year approached pressure mounted to take every available step to ensure they get refunds if the court finds the levies illegal. That includes filing lawsuits, in case any future refund process flows through the court system.

The trade court last month denied a request by dozens of companies to suspend the Customs and Border Protection’s rolling process for finalising tariff amounts on imports, known as “liquidation.” The trade court credited the government’s guarantees that the administration won’t use the liquidation process as grounds to object later to courts ordering tariff amounts recalculated — and refunds paid — if Trump’s policies are struck down.

The Trump administration has signalled it intends to reimpose most, if not all, of the president’s tariffs by using different legal authorities if the Supreme Court blocks him from using the emergency powers law. That includes national security provisions, which Trump has used to impose tariffs on steel, for example. But those methods would be more cumbersome. Another attempt at imposing sweeping global duties could open the administration up to more legal challenges.

US customs authorities had collected tariffs tied to Trump’s use of the emergency powers law from more than 301,000 importers across 34 million shipments of goods entering the country as of Dec. 10, according to a government court filing. The payments make up a significant portion of the more than $200 billion the US government says it has collected as a result of Trump’s broader package of tariff actions last year.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection provided a statement saying that the agency would continue to enforce tariffs under existing US laws, regulations and executive actions, including finalising duty amounts.

To create a snapshot of businesses joining the tariffs battle, Bloomberg analysed 327 of the corporate plaintiffs that sued for refunds by mid-December and categorised them based on data compiled by Bloomberg. Court records and other publicly available information were also used to identify some of the parent companies of the entities listed as plaintiffs.

The results show the broad sweep of industries affected by Trump’s tariff policies — and the firms publicly stepping forward to oppose them as they bet on the Supreme Court’s ruling to recoup the tariffs they paid.

Trump Tariffs Challengers Span Consumer, Industrial Goods

Apparel and textile producers and distributors and the automotive industry dominated the cases, along with businesses that make industrial and electrical equipment. Lawsuits were filed by retailers and wholesalers selling everything from ice fishing equipment and makeup to home decor and computer parts.

Businesses suing for refunds are nearly all US-based. The 327 companies analysed by Bloomberg had headquarters spread out across nearly three dozen states, though New York and California dominated the docket. A dozen additional plaintiffs were based abroad in Canada, Singapore, and several European countries.

Most companies suing are privately owned. More than a dozen of the plaintiffs reviewed by Bloomberg are publicly traded entities, including BorgWarner Inc., Standex International Corp., Teladoc Health Inc., Moog Inc., Astronics Corp., Costco, G-III Apparel Group Ltd., Innovative Eyewear Inc., Lifetime Brands Inc., Plexus Corp., Goodyear, and Weyco Group Inc. Representatives for the companies declined to comment or didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Location of US Companies Suing for Trump Tariff Refunds

Around a quarter of the corporate plaintiffs had foreign-based parent companies, showing the global stakes of the Supreme Court’s decision. In some instances, multiple US-based subsidiaries of a single parent were named in one case as plaintiffs, since each importer is eligible to sue for a refund of what it paid.

Lower courts found the tariffs were unlawful in a series of rulings last year but allowed the administration to enforce them until the fight is over.

“I worked very hard to build this business from scratch,” said Marvina Robinson, the founder and CEO of B. Stuyvesant Champagne LLC in Brooklyn, New York. She filed a lawsuit on Nov. 4 to recoup the $78,000 she spent on tariffs in 2025. That unexpected cost resulted in her hiring fewer people during the holiday season, importing fewer bottles from France and raising prices between $2 to $7 per bottle.

It’s important, Robinson said, to show that “businesses aren’t just going to stand around and take anything.”

While the recent spike in larger corporations fighting the tariffs is welcome, some of the initial litigants expressed frustration that large, deep-pocketed companies are poised to benefit from their work.

“Everybody stayed out of the fight because the president is very powerful and he makes that known to people that challenge him,” said Sara Albrecht, chair of the board of Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian-leaning public interest firm handling one of the cases before the Supreme Court. The litigation has cost the nonprofit nearly double its $3.5 million annual budget, she said.

Albrecht said she asked Costco for a contribution following Bloomberg’s report that the retailer filed a lawsuit. The company’s general counsel declined, according to emails reviewed by Bloomberg, saying the litigation didn’t align with their philanthropic focus on education and health. Costco spokesperson Gary Millerchip declined to comment.

There’s precedent for mass refunds. The US trade court created a claims process after the Supreme Court in 1998 struck down a harbour maintenance tax on exporters as unconstitutional. According to the court’s opinion and news reports at the time, that fight involved approximately 4,000 cases in the trade court and $750 million in taxes paid.

For now, customs brokers and lawyers are advising companies to at least have their import records in order for a refund push, even if they don’t know what it’ll look like yet.

“When clients ask, ‘Well, do we need to file a case,’ I can’t tell anybody what’s going to happen three months from now,” Smithweiss said.

By Zoe Tillman, Jeannette Neumann and Laura Curtis