i spend a lot of time helping businesses build better supplier relationships, but this one stings. a client of mine runs an independent garden center in Montana, and their story is playing out across a lot of small retail operations right now.

Back in February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the IEEPA tariffs from 2025 were never legal. Since then, CBP has been refunding those tariffs-billions of dollars-but only to the importer of record. That's almost never the small retailer. It's the supplier.

here's the kicker: we never paid those tariffs directly, but we absolutely paid for them. Supplier costs went up when the tariffs hit, and those increases landed straight on our invoices. Retail margins don't have room to absorb a tariff and still mark things up normally-doubling shelf prices isn't something customers tolerate. so we ate it. Quietly, for almost two years, out of our own margin.

Now the tariffs are gone and the money's flowing back.. straight to the importers. Unless a supplier decides on their own to pass some of that refund downstream, retailers like us just eat the loss twice-once when the tariff hit, once when the refund doesn't trickle down.

We sent a letter to our own suppliers asking straightforward questions: did tariffs apply to what you sold us, have you filed for or received a refund, and will any of that show up in our pricing or as a credit. not accusing anyone of bad faith-this refund process is brand new and still tangled in appeals-but it felt worth asking directly instead of assuming it'll just happen.

I'm curious if other small retailers or wholesalers are seeing the same thing, or if anyone's actually gotten a supplier to pass a refund back. Feels like something more of us should be asking about. And for what it's worth, I've heard from importers that the money hasn't all come back yet-only some has been disbursed, and the current administration is dragging their feet. One contact told me they're owed around $20-25,000 and won't even be able to file claims until later this summer. So the system is broken on both ends.

If you're in a similar spot, start asking your suppliers now. the worst they can say is no, and the best case is you recover some margin you already lost