US Court to Discuss Settlement on $175Bn Trump-Tariff Refund After Supreme Court Rule

A federal judge is set to meet privately with government lawyers on Friday to work out how to return up to $175bn in tariffs that were collected unlawfully — a gathering that a court official has described as a settlement conference, according to a report by Reuters.

Judge Richard Eaton of the US Court of International Trade will convene in closed session with lawyers representing the customs agency responsible for reimbursing more than 300,000 importers who paid the levies before they were struck down as unconstitutional last month, the report said.

According to the government lawyers, the process for refunding Donald Trump's signature tariffs was unprecedented in scope and would require manual review of tens of millions of tariff payments.

US courts operate under a general presumption of public access, though judges do occasionally conduct private sessions with the parties involved to sort out procedural matters or handle sensitive information.

The court's own online calendar lists Friday's meeting simply as a "closed conference." When Reuters asked why the public was being excluded, Gina Justice, the clerk of the trade court, confirmed on Thursday that it had been convened as a settlement conference — a designation that typically implies the parties are exploring the terms of a resolution rather than merely working through administrative arrangements.

The case that Eaton is overseeing to create a refund ​process was brought by a single importer, Atmus Filtration Inc, which said in a court filing it had paid $11mn in illegal tariffs.

In the Atmus case, Judge Eaton issued a broad directive on Wednesday instructing US Customs and Border Protection to start reimbursing tariffs that had been unlawfully collected. The refunds are to be processed through the agency’s existing internal mechanism and could apply to potentially hundreds of thousands of importers. The order also clarified that the ruling extends beyond Atmus and covers all affected importers.

Supreme Court's Order

The ruling on February 20 dealt the Trump administration a significant blow. The Supreme Court struck down a sweeping range of tariffs the president had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), finding that the legislation did not confer the authority he had claimed it did. It was one of the most consequential judicial rebukes of his trade agenda to date.

Trump's response was characteristically combative. He publicly criticised the justices who had ruled against him and moved swiftly to impose fresh duties under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a provision that, like IEEPA, had never previously been deployed to levy tariffs in the US. The legal durability of that manoeuvre remains to be tested.