Companies are jostling for position in case the Supreme Court forces the Trump administration to refund billions in tariff revenue it has collected this year, according to a report from Yahoo Finance. They are doing so without clarity on the best approach and amid plenty of uncertainty about whether any decision to invalidate President Trump’s signature “blanket” tariffs and demand the money be paid back is even in the offing.

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“We just don’t know how this one’s gonna shake out,” Erik Smithweiss, a partner at the firm of GDLSK, noted. He described the preparations underway as about getting ready for multiple scenarios. “We’re really talking about belts and suspenders,” he said.

These business-world preparations include preemptive lawsuits against the Trump administration, preparing petitions to the US Customs Department, as well as simply double-checking bills to make sure they know exactly what they paid. All to secure a spot in a tariff refund line that may or may not ever queue up.

The work began in earnest after Supreme Court arguments in early November saw swing justices pose skeptical questions about the president’s defense of his tariffs powers. At stake across the US economy is revenue in the neighborhood of $100 billion. The US government has collected over $200 billion in duties since the start of the year, and the Tax Foundations estimates that about 55% of that revenue is coming through the specific tariffs facing legal peril.

The Supreme Court case concerns whether a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) empowers the president to impose tariffs. Other tariff powers, like so-called Section 232 and Section 301 duties that also bring in significant revenue, are not on the court’s docket.

A Range of Approaches

Costco made headlines this past week when it became the biggest name yet to join a fast-growing list of businesses suing the Trump administration in order to ensure their future eligibility for refunds. The lawsuit called Trump’s IEEPA tariffs “unlawfully collected.” The company told a federal trade court it “seeks relief from the impending liquidations to ensure that its right to a complete refund is not jeopardized.”

Similar lawsuits have reportedly been filed by a range of other brand names, from Revlon to Ray-Ban to Kawasaki to Bumble Bee Foods. In the trade context, liquidations refers to when a final calculation of tariffs owed on an imported good is made. This process is required to be done within a year of the duty first being levied but generally happens sooner, at about the 10 to 11 month range.

Source: IndexBox Market Intelligence Platform