Refunds of the unconstitutional tariffs paid by companies across Virginia and the country will not come soon — if at all, guest columnist Jim Spencer writes.
In 2025, Sarah Wells Bags, a small Virginia business, made $500,000 less in revenue than it did in 2024, founder Sarah Wells told me. Wells attributed that downturn to disruptions caused by President Donald Trump’s legally suspect tariffs.
Refunds of unconstitutional tariffs paid by companies across Virginia and the country will not come soon — if at all — to Wells and millions of other business owners, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s Feb. 20 decision that limited Trump’s ability to enact certain tariffs without the approval of Congress.
Judging from the president’s words, his administration is in no hurry to make any of his victims whole without years of court battles.
“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said of the Supreme Court justices on Feb. 20, when reporters asked if the federal government would return tens of billions collected through the tariffs. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”
Just like he did going to war with Iran without a constitutionally required declaration from Congress, and as he did in ignoring constitutional rules of due process and free speech in his Gestapo-like deportation program of immigrants, Trump ignored the Constitution in unilaterally imposing tariffs.
Trump called his tariff plan “liberation day.” Again and again, the president promised Americans that foreign countries would pay the tariffs he imposed. Over and over, he lied.
In Virginia and elsewhere, many hard-working small business owners see that as a betrayal.
“The president’s idea that exporters pay the tariffs is just wrong,” said Bill Butcher, the owner of Port City Brewing, a beer company in Alexandria. Trump’s tariffs “are a further indication that the president doesn’t care about small businesses,” Butcher added.
If there is one thing most conservative and liberal economists can agree on, it is who gets stuck with tariffs.
“There was never any misunderstanding on who pays the tariffs,” Wells said. “We’ve had to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to get products out of ports.”
The uncertainty of the situation weighed heavily on Wells.
“You never knew what the rate was. It could go from 20% to 49% to 145% in a few weeks. It disrupts your business. Many of my colleagues have had to take out second mortgages. I had to lay someone off last year,” she said.
That’s why Virginia’s U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine signed on to a bill to require Americans get refunds for Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs.
Kaine, a Democrat, told me he does not expect cooperation from the White House in getting refunds for his constituents, regardless of their political persuasion. Kaine also said that one corporate leader told him that while big companies may survive, some smaller businesses will not.
“Big corporate players can hire good lawyers,” Kaine added. “But what about everyday citizens and mom and pop businesses?”
Unless they sign on to a class action lawsuit, they may drown in a wake of political cynicism.
Passage of a refund bill is unlikely because Republicans hold slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Those majorities would be forced to choose between Trump and the people they supposedly serve.
“There are too many Republicans who are still too afraid of Donald Trump to do what I believe is their constitutional duty,” Warner told me.
“In the case of tariffs, they’ve all quietly complained, but we were only able — on the basis of Tim Kaine’s good work — to pass one resolution around the Canadian tariffs. We should have passed more.”
A Congressional Research Service report found that by Dec. 10, 2025, Trump’s unconstitutional use of the International Emergency Powers Act to place tariffs brought in about $129 billion.
During that time, Wells’ company suffered from chaos. For the first 13 years of its existence, Sarah Wells Bags paid a Chinese factory to make carrying cases for breast milk used by nursing women. Wells told me she tried, but could not find, an American manufacturer to work at the scale she needed.
Wells’ relationship with China ended in 2025 when Trump upped tariffs on the country. Suddenly, Wells was looking at three separate tariffs passed on by her manufacturer that totaled 62% on the cost of her bags.
Wells tried to move her manufacturing operation to Cambodia where she would only pay a 17% tariff on her bags. Then, Trump declared “liberation day” and announced a list of tariffs on individual countries that tacked a 49% tariff on Cambodia.
It blew up Wells’ plan. She lacked the cash flow and had to delay purchases of new bags. She eventually ran out of her best-selling inventory and watched her revenue shrivel. Now, she has sued for a refund of unconstitutional tariffs but needs a miraculously expedited legal process supported by Congress to be made whole anytime soon.
Making Trump accountable is exactly what Congress has refused to do in response to the president’s abuses of executive power.
This lack of checks and balances is ultimately toxic for the country, Warner told me.
“When Congress continues to cede power to a chief executive who ignores the law, ignores norms, (and exhibits) … crudeness and threatening to his supporters and foes alike, it really diminishes America (and) diminishes Americans’ trust in their government and institutions,” the senator said.