Will Small Businesses Get Their Money Back? How to Survive a Trade War in 2026

How a board-game importer’s near-bankruptcy became the defining story of America’s small-business tariff refund battle — and what every importer needs to know right now.

Jonathan Silva didn’t sleep much in the winter of 2025. The founder of WS Game Company, a Massachusetts-based maker of deluxe, heirloom-quality board games — the kind of Monopoly set that sits under a Christmas tree and gets handed down a generation — had built something genuinely beautiful out of nothing. Premium lacquered boxes. Velvet-lined trays. Gold-foil lettering. His products were manufactured in China, assembled with the care of artisanal furniture, and sold at a premium that justified every cent of cost. Then the tariffs came, and the math that had made WS Game Company viable for over a decade simply stopped working.

For small importers like Silva, the Trump administration’s sweeping use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — IEEPA — to impose tariffs ranging from 10% to 145% on Chinese goods was not an abstraction. It was an invoice. A brutal, recurring, cash-depleting invoice that arrived with every container. Small business tariff refunds weren’t yet a phrase anyone was using. Survival was the only vocabulary that mattered.

Then, on February 20, 2026, the landscape shifted — dramatically, and with the kind of judicial finality that sends shockwaves through trade policy circles. In a 6-3 ruling, the United States Supreme Court struck down the administration’s IEEPA-based tariffs as an unconstitutional overreach of executive power, affirming a lower Court of International Trade decision and handing American importers their most significant legal victory since the Section 232 steel battles of the previous decade. Jonathan Silva, like tens of thousands of small-business owners across America, exhaled for the first time in months. But the exhale, it turns out, was premature.

The Ruling Heard Around the Supply Chain

The Supreme Court’s February decision was, in the dry language of constitutional law, a separation-of-powers case. In plain English, it was a repudiation of the idea that a president could unilaterally impose sweeping import taxes on the entire global trading system by declaring a trade deficit a national emergency.

Writing for the majority, the Court held that IEEPA’s broad delegation of economic powers to the executive did not encompass the authority to impose comprehensive tariff schedules — a power the Constitution explicitly reserves for Congress. The dissent, authored by the Court’s three most conservative justices, argued that modern economic emergencies demanded executive flexibility. The majority was unmoved.

The immediate legal consequence: every IEEPA-based tariff collected since the policy’s implementation was, in principle, an unlawful taking. According to modeling by the Penn Wharton Budget Model and analysis cited by Bloomberg Economics, the total pool of potentially refundable duties ranges from $130 billion to $175 billion — one of the largest potential government refund obligations in American history.

For context: that sum is larger than the annual GDP of Hungary. It dwarfs the 2008 TARP bank bailout disbursements in a single fiscal year. And it sits in the coffers of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, waiting — theoretically — to flow back to the importers who paid it.

The word “theoretically” is doing enormous work in that sentence.

Why “You Won” Doesn’t Mean “You’re Paid”

Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade issued a supplementary ruling in March 2026 that should have provided a clear refund pathway. It did not. What it provided instead was a framework for CBP to process claims — a framework that, in practice, has moved with the urgency of continental drift.

CBP, which processes roughly $80 billion in duties annually under normal circumstances, was not designed to administer a retroactive refund program of this magnitude. Its legacy IT systems require manual entry for many claim types. Its staffing levels — reduced by administration-wide federal hiring freezes — are inadequate for the volume. Importers and their customs brokers report waiting periods of six to eighteen months for even preliminary claim acknowledgments.

For WS Game Company, which Silva estimates paid over $2.3 million in IEEPA tariffs across a 14-month period, the refund represents the difference between solvency and the kind of debt restructuring that changes a company’s trajectory permanently. “The money is theoretically ours,” Silva told a trade-industry forum in Boston in March. “But ‘theoretically’ doesn’t pay my vendors. It doesn’t pay my staff.”

His frustration is arithmetically precise. Small importers carry disproportionate cash-flow burdens relative to large corporations for a structural reason: they lack the balance-sheet depth to absorb multi-million-dollar duties and simply wait for courts to sort it out. A Fortune 500 retailer that overpaid $200 million in tariffs has a treasury function, revolving credit facilities, and investor patience. A family-owned importer that overpaid $2 million has a personal guarantee on a business line of credit and a very anxious accountant.

The Vultures Are Circling: Hedge Funds and the 10-Cent Dollar

Into this gap — between legal victory and actual cash — a new industry has emerged with the predatory efficiency that financial markets always display when uncertainty meets urgency.

Hedge funds and specialty finance firms have begun approaching small importers with offers to purchase their tariff refund claims outright, at 10 to 30 cents on the dollar. The pitch is seductive in its simplicity: take the certainty of immediate liquidity over the uncertainty of a government process that may take years and involves litigation risk if the administration pursues legislative workarounds.

For a business owner staring at payroll in two weeks, a 15-cent offer on a $2 million claim — $300,000 in hand today — can feel like salvation. It is, in structural terms, a payday loan dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit.

Trade attorneys are unanimous in urging caution. “These firms are pricing in legal risk that, post-Supreme Court, is substantially lower than they’re representing,” says one Washington-based customs lawyer who requested anonymity due to ongoing client negotiations. “Small businesses that sell these claims at 15 cents are giving away 85 cents of what is very likely their money.”

The tariff refund process for small importers is navigable, these attorneys argue — but it requires patience, proper documentation, and ideally representation by a licensed customs broker or trade law firm. The legal playbook is discussed in detail in the survival section below.

The Human Cost Behind the Numbers

Before the policy debate, before the litigation timeline, before the survival strategies: there are people.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that over 180,000 small and mid-sized import-dependent businesses were materially impacted by IEEPA tariffs. The majority of these are not tech-enabled direct-to-consumer brands with venture backing. They are distributors, specialty retailers, furniture makers, toy importers, electronics assemblers, hardware suppliers — businesses woven into the fabric of local economies in every congressional district in America.

Research by Harvard economists during the first Trump tariff era established a template that 2025–2026 data is replicating with grim fidelity: the cost of import tariffs falls overwhelmingly on domestic consumers and domestic businesses, not on foreign exporters. The $1,300 to $1,800 annual household cost estimate — now updated by the Yale Budget Lab for 2025–2026 tariff schedules — represents a regressive tax that hits lower-income households hardest, since they spend a higher share of income on goods.

At the macroeconomic level, the Peterson Institute for International Economics projected a 0.6 to 0.9 percentage point drag on GDP growth in 2025 attributable to the combined tariff program, with disproportionate effects in manufacturing-adjacent service sectors. Unemployment in import-sensitive industries — retail buyers, customs logistics, freight forwarding — rose measurably, though the headline unemployment figures masked significant churn.

The Global Chessboard: How the World Responded

The Supreme Court tariff ruling’s impact on small business has a domestic dimension that dominates American coverage. But the geopolitical reverberations deserve equal attention — and they complicate the picture considerably.

The European Union, which had prepared a €95 billion countermeasure package targeting American exports, placed those retaliatory tariffs in legal suspension following the Supreme Court ruling, pending clarification of U.S. trade policy. Brussels remains poised to act; the package is not withdrawn, merely paused.

China, for its part, has used the 14-month tariff war to accelerate supply-chain relationships with Southeast Asian manufacturers, deepening what trade economists call “tariff-hopping” arrangements — routing production through Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia to reach American shelves. The practical effect: Chinese manufacturing remains in American supply chains, just with additional logistics overhead and a Vietnamese certificate of origin.

For emerging-market exporters — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India’s textile sector — the uncertainty has been both threat and opportunity. Vietnam saw $4.2 billion in new foreign direct investment in the first three quarters of 2025, much of it from Chinese manufacturers establishing “China+1” facilities. India’s electronics sector, benefiting from both Apple’s supply-chain diversification and favorable bilateral negotiations, posted record export growth.

The deeper question, one that Foreign Affairs and the Atlantic Council are actively debating: does this ruling restore confidence in the rules-based trading order, or does it merely establish that American courts, not American trade commitments, are the last line of defense for international economic stability? The answer matters enormously for the WTO’s already diminished authority.

Trump’s Response: Section 122 and the Next Battle

The administration did not accept defeat quietly. Within three weeks of the Supreme Court ruling, the White House announced a new tariff framework under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a statutory authority that grants the president explicit congressional authorization to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days to address balance-of-payments emergencies.

The new Trump Section 122 tariffs, set at the statutory maximum of 15%, cover roughly 60% of the goods previously subject to IEEPA rates. For importers like Silva, this represents a material reduction — but not elimination — of tariff burden. Goods that faced 145% duties now face 15%. The cash-flow math improves; it does not resolve.

Legal challenges to Section 122’s application are already moving through the Court of International Trade. Trade attorneys note that Section 122’s 150-day time limit creates an inherent sunset; without congressional extension, these tariffs expire automatically. Whether Congress will act — and what a bipartisan trade framework might look like — is the central legislative drama of mid-2026.

How to Survive a Trade War in 2026: Eight Strategies for Small Importers

The following framework is drawn from conversations with trade attorneys, customs brokers, supply-chain consultants, and small-business owners who have navigated the past 18 months with their companies intact. It is not legal advice. It is the distilled operational intelligence of people who have been through it.

1. File Your Refund Claims Immediately — and Precisely The statute of limitations on customs duty protests is 180 days from the date of liquidation of each entry. Every day of delay narrows your window. Work with a licensed customs broker or trade attorney to file CBP Form 19 protests for every entry paid under IEEPA authority. Document everything: commercial invoices, bills of lading, entry summaries. The CBP protest process is navigable but unforgiving of paperwork errors.

2. Do Not Sell Your Refund Claim Without Independent Legal Advice If a hedge fund or specialty finance firm approaches you with a claim-purchase offer, obtain an independent legal assessment of your claim’s value before responding. The post-Supreme Court legal risk profile of these claims is substantially lower than buyers are representing. A second opinion may save you millions.

3. Model Your Supply Chain Against Every Tariff Scenario Section 122 tariffs expire in 150 days unless extended. Build financial models for three scenarios: tariffs expire and are not replaced; tariffs are extended at 15%; new tariffs are imposed under fresh congressional authorization. Your procurement decisions, inventory levels, and pricing strategy should be scenario-tested, not anchored to a single assumption.

4. Explore Duty Drawback Programs If you import goods that are subsequently exported, processed, or incorporated into exported products, CBP’s duty drawback program allows recovery of up to 99% of duties paid. This program predates IEEPA and remains fully operational. Many small importers are leaving significant refunds unclaimed simply because they’re unaware of the mechanism.

5. Investigate First Sale Valuation Customs duties are assessed on the “transaction value” of goods — but for multi-tiered supply chains, there are legal methods to have duties assessed on the first sale price (manufacturer to middleman) rather than the final sale price (middleman to importer). This can reduce dutiable value by 15–30% in complex supply chains. Consult a customs attorney.

6. Diversify Sourcing — But Do the Math Honestly “China+1” has become a mantra, but the economics are frequently misrepresented. Vietnam, India, and Mexico each offer genuine advantages for specific product categories — but also carry hidden costs: longer lead times, higher minimum order quantities, infrastructure gaps, and intellectual property risks that are different but real. Model the total landed cost, not just the tariff differential, before committing to sourcing shifts.

7. Use Currency and Commodity Hedging Where Available For businesses with sufficient scale, forward contracts on Chinese yuan (CNY) and on key commodity inputs (aluminum, cotton, lithium) can provide meaningful protection against the cost volatility that trade-war uncertainty generates. Many small businesses assume hedging is reserved for large corporations. Increasingly, fintech platforms are making basic hedging accessible at sub-institutional scale.

8. Build a Cash-Flow Buffer Explicitly Sized for Policy Shock The lesson of 2025–2026 is that policy shock — sudden, large, unpredictable cost increases — is now a permanent feature of the operating environment for import-dependent businesses. Financial advisors specializing in SME trade finance now recommend maintaining 90 to 120 days of import duty costs in liquid reserves, specifically earmarked for tariff-related cash-flow disruption. This is no longer conservative; it is table stakes.

The Longer Arc: What This Moment Means

Jonathan Silva’s roller-coaster — the joy of a Supreme Court victory, the frustration of a bureaucratic refund process, the anxiety of new Section 122 tariffs, the predatory comfort of hedge-fund offers — is not an anomaly. It is the defining small-business experience of 2026.

The deeper structural story is about institutional fragility. American trade policy, for decades backstopped by a relatively stable WTO framework and bipartisan congressional commitment to rules-based commerce, has revealed itself to be more dependent on the restraint of individual executive actors than anyone fully appreciated. When that restraint failed, the courts ultimately held — but only after 14 months of damage to businesses that cannot easily absorb damage.

For the global trading order, the American example is simultaneously reassuring and alarming. Reassuring: judicial independence worked. Courts struck down unlawful executive action. The rule of law functioned. Alarming: the process took 14 months, cost hundreds of billions of dollars in economic disruption, and left the resolution of refund claims in the hands of an underfunded administrative apparatus that will take years to clear the backlog.

Small businesses did not cause the trade war. They absorbed it. They paid for it. And now, in the long administrative aftermath of a Supreme Court victory, they are being asked to wait — again — for money that is, by every legal definition, already theirs.

Jonathan Silva is waiting. So are 180,000 others.

The check, as they say in American commerce, is in the mail.