A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators from the Midwest on Thursday asked the Commerce Department to investigate major agricultural machinery manufacturers, saying they paid shareholders handsomely while offshoring jobs.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, and Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to open an investigation under a law that allows tariffs to be used for national security purposes.

John Deere, Caterpillar and the Wisconsin-based Case New Holland had all laid off U.S. workers in recent years while moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The moves hollowed out Midwest industrial towns but made the companies enormous profits, Baldwin and Moreno wrote. 

“These companies should not be allowed to eliminate American jobs, pay Mexican workers poverty wages, and then ship products back to the U.S. for additional profit on the backs of our communities,” they wrote. “They argue that offshoring is necessary to remain competitive, but when it comes time to pay executives or shareholders, they are never short of money.”

The companies have all delivered generous payments to shareholders in recent years, the senators said. John Deere has paid $8.4 billion, CNH has paid $1.7 billion and Caterpillar has paid $18.2 billion through dividends and stock buybacks, they wrote.

But payouts for investors came at the expense of their blue-collar workforce, Baldwin and Moreno wrote.

CNH laid off 220 workers from its Racine, Wisconsin, facility in 2024 and moved production to Mexico. All of the roughly 200 CNH workers in a Burlington, Iowa, facility are set to lose their jobs after the company announced in January it would close the plant. And John Deere laid off more than 3,600 union employees after moving production from Iowa to Mexico, the senators said.

Representatives for the companies did not immediately return messages seeking comment Thursday. 

Section 232

The lawmakers asked Lutnick to open an investigation that could result in so-called Section 232 tariffs to deter the companies from moving production to Mexico. 

“These companies and their executives should not be rewarded for destroying American jobs or permitted to import their products without facing a penalty,” they wrote.

The tariffs, named for the section of the 1962 law that created them, permits the administration to levy tariffs for national security purposes. Though created in 1962, no administration used them until President Donald Trump’s first term, when he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The administration now “has a unique opportunity,” the senators said, to prevent heavy equipment manufacturers from moving more jobs out of the country.

However, they added that any Section 232 investigation would be limited by a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that Trump approved in his first term. They called for the administration to “address … issues” created by the agreement, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

The agreement “has incentivized major heavy equipment manufacturers to locate production in Mexico,” they wrote. “Any efforts that the Administration takes solely on Section 232 will be weakened by the shortcomings that currently exist in USMCA.”

Spokespeople for the Commerce Department and White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

MAGA appeal

The senators’ letter appeals to key parts of Trump’s political coalition. 

Throughout his decade in politics, he has focused messaging on protecting farming and reviving domestic manufacturing industries. 

In both his victorious presidential elections, the Republican won unusually large slices of union workers in swing states with legacy manufacturing industries while running up a major advantage with rural voters.

Trump has aggressively — and controversially — employed tariffs to encourage domestic production.

He is scheduled to host nearly 1,000 farmers at the White House on Friday. 

WASHINGTON — Arizona coffee roaster Gabe Hagen is wondering if he’ll ever recoup the tens of thousands of dollars he paid in tariffs to import beans from the world’s major coffee-growing regions in South America, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.

Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs as illegal, Hagen is among an army of small business owners who are unsure if they’ll be made whole after a year of increasing costs and uncertainty.

“I’m in the process right now trying to consolidate all of my invoices … because I need the money back — if they’re going to give it back,” Hagen told States Newsroom in an interview.

“A pallet of coffee would cost us 5 to 6 to $7,000 if we had a bag or two of really high-grade in there. Post tariffs, our cheapest pallet was around $8,000, and it went anywhere from 8 to $10,000 or $11,000 per pallet of coffee,” he said. 

How the government will refund the roughly $166 billion in tariffs Trump triggered under a 1970s emergency economic powers statute is slowly coming to light in court documents. 

Nearly 2,000 companies filed suit for tariff refunds in the U.S. Court of International Trade, with many lining up even before the highly anticipated 6-3 Supreme Court decision.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s four-step refund process for businesses is anywhere from 40% to 80% complete, depending on the step, according to a court-mandated update filed March 12 with the Court of International Trade. 

Justices leave it to the lower courts

The justices, not giving guidance on refunds, left the matter to the lower courts in their Feb. 20 ruling that invalidated the sweeping tariffs Trump unilaterally imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. 

The president declared various emergencies under the statute during his first year in office. 

From fentanyl smuggling, to trade imbalances, to political disputes, he used each declared crisis to impose steep taxes on imports. 

Shifting sometimes day to day, tariffs reached as high as 50% on Brazilian and Indian goods after Trump declared emergencies over the prosecution of a political ally and over the use of Russian oil, respectively.

U.S. importers saw tariffs spike as high as 145% on Chinese goods during a tit-for-tat trade war sparked by Trump’s declaration of a trade imbalance emergency. The duties largely settled at a roughly 50% effective rate on several products after the trade war and negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy. 

The Trump administration has since sought different pathways to collect tariffs, including almost immediately instituting temporary import taxes under a different 1970s trade statute. 

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has also commenced widespread investigations into dozens of the largest U.S. trading partners that could trigger new tariffs, depending on findings.

‘Survived, but barely’

The rollercoaster ride was enough to almost bring down Busy Baby, a Minnesota-based baby product company that manufactures several patented designs in China.

Busy Baby owner Beth Benike, who shared her experience with States Newsroom in February, is now suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to recoup money lost.

Matthew Platkin, former New Jersey attorney general and Benike’s lawyer, said Benike’s business “survived, but barely.” 

“She had to keep merchandise overseas because she couldn’t afford to pay to bring them here. And when she didn’t get product, she wasn’t getting paid, she wasn’t making money,” Platkin said in an interview with States Newsroom.  

“She had opportunities lined up for expansion. She was going to hire new folks. That didn’t happen, and that was because of one thing: the president’s illegal tariffs,” he said.

Benike’s complaint does not specify a dollar amount, but Platkin said, “It’s substantial, especially for a business of her size.”

“We’re still going through and assessing the full impact of the tariffs on her, but rest assured, even for a small business, it’s tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum,” Platkin said.

“The federal government should just refund these folks their money with interest, period. Like, this shouldn’t even require litigation. They were caught taking illegal tariffs from millions of businesses,” he said.

$166 billion collected

Federal Judge Richard Eaton, who sits on the bench for the Court of International Trade, ordered administration customs officials in early March to stop collecting the tariffs deemed illegal under IEEPA, and to recalculate any past duties that included them.

Eaton granted the March 5 order in the tariff refund lawsuit brought by Atmus Filtration, a Nashville, Tennessee-based company. 

The judge, however, outlined that orders in the Court of International Trade are “universal” for all tariff refunds owed — meaning the trade cases are not subject to the Supreme Court’s 2025 finding in a separate immigration case that universal rulings are impermissible.

Businesses the size of Busy Baby to behemoths like Costco and FedEx have paid tariffs to the U.S. government. Many, but not all, have sued.

Customs officials, in a March 6 court filing, declared any refund process would take at least 45 days to be functional. According to the filing, as of early March the agency had collected approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs from 330,000 American importers.

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, research associate for trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said as the clock ticks on tariff refunds, interest is accruing.

“The refunds are not necessarily coming soon and that has big implications, obviously, for taxpayers, but I think most importantly for the companies that are relying on this money to literally keep their doors open,” Obregon said.

He and colleagues calculated the government’s interest payments on the refunds owed totals about $700 million more with each passing month.

Barton O’Brien, who told States Newsroom last month his dog apparel company ate the tariff costs rather than raise prices, said he’s “certainly not counting on a refund anytime soon” as the administration “seems pretty dead set” on not giving them.

“I expect they will drag out the process in the courts for as long as they can,” he said in a written response to States Newsroom on March 9. “If we get one, great… It’s a bonus. But still won’t cover the hole left by the tariffs.” 

“Also, as a small business we’re not in a position to fight the administration, so I’m happy to sit back and let … other Fortune 500 companies with an army of lawyers fight this one out on our behalf.  If they win, we’ll all get refunds,” said O’Brien, who works with manufacturers in China and India.

‘Do the right thing’

Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for the advocacy group Main Street Alliance, said his organization will continue to apply legal and public pressure to ensure small businesses recoup the money.

“I would just say that the administration should do the right thing and return the money, and they also should stop trying to find cute, creative ways to institute new tariffs that are also going to be illegal and struck down,” he said.

Two dozen Democratic-led states have already sued the administration in the Court of International Trade over the new tariffs Trump announced immediately after his Supreme Court loss. 

The lawsuit, led by Oregon, also includes Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Small businesses and Democratic-led states were instrumental in the Supreme Court’s February decision striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.

States Newsroom reached out to the Trump administration for comment but did not receive a reply.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday demanding the administration refund businesses that paid tariffs to import goods into the United States under authority the Supreme Court has ruled the president never held. 

“The American people — small business owners, importers, manufacturers, and the consumers who ultimately bore the cost of these illegal taxes — deserve better than this stonewalling,” the group wrote. “This money does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the businesses and individuals you illegally taxed.”

The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 that President Donald Trump wrongly instituted tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, writing “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Trump held a press conference later that day declaring he would institute tariffs under other authorities that he and members of his administration believe Congress has granted the president. But he didn’t give a clear answer about whether the federal government would refund the businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs.

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said at the time. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Senate Democrats’ letter says the Trump administration “collected over $130 billion in illegal taxes and then refused — with a smile and a shrug — to give it back.”

Democrats wrote in the letter the administration must tell U.S. Customs and Border Protection “to begin processing automatic refunds for all tariffs and customs duties unlawfully collected under IEEPA since January 20, 2025.”

The Trump administration, they wrote, should release a timeline within 90 days for when it would begin those refunds. 

The letter was signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Whip Dick Durbin, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Delaware Sens. Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s trade agenda Friday, ruling the tariffs he issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act are illegal.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said Congress alone holds the power to tax in almost all circumstances. The Trump administration’s argument that trade deficits and illegal drug imports granted it emergency power to levy tariffs was not justified, the court said. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods.

The Trump administration had argued that a provision in the law, known as IEEPA, that said the executive branch could “regulate” imports empowered the president to levy tariffs.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others (in the law)—‘regulate’ and ‘importation’—the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts’ opinion. 

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh filed dissenting opinions. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito joined Kavanaugh’s.

Kavanaugh’s dissent accepted the administration’s reading of the law and said it was not the justices’ role to decide a policy matter that has “generated vigorous” debate. 

“The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate . . . importation,’” he wrote. “Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”

New tariffs

Trump blasted the ruling at an afternoon press conference. Asked if he regretted nominating Gorsuch and Barrett, he said the decision was “an embarrassment to their families.”

He said the judges were “being politically correct” and catering to special interests rather than fairly interpreting the law.

He also said he would impose global 10% tariffs under a provision of the Trade Act of 1974, which  allows the president to unilaterally apply tariffs for up to 150 days.

“Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 over and above our normal tariffs already being charged,” he said.

Tariffs were an important tool to balance the country’s trade and hold leverage over other countries, he said. 

‘Unchecked’ presidential authority

In the opinion of the court, Roberts wrote that Trump’s expansive use of the emergency tariff powers would upend the balance of powers between branches of government.

The administration’s position would empower the president “to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs,” simply by declaring an economic emergency, Roberts wrote. Further, that declaration would be unreviewable and could be overturned only by a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress.

That view “would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking,” he wrote.

When Congress intends to convey that kind of power to the executive branch, it generally does so in uncertain terms, Roberts said.

“In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” he wrote. 

The government’s argument that IEEPA authorized that power, “falls short,” the opinion said. 

The chief justice added that it was telling that in the nearly 50 years since the IEEPA became law, no other president has read such broad powers into it.

What to do about the taxes that were collected?

The ruling opens a new debate about how to handle tariff revenue that the government has already collected since Trump first imposed the IEEPA tariffs a year ago.

Kavanaugh noted the likely confusion the issue would cause.

“The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers,” he wrote. “But that process is likely to be a ‘mess,’ as was acknowledged at oral argument.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent economic liberal, said that revenue should be sent to small businesses that were harmed by the imposition of tariffs.

“Any refunds from the federal government should end up in the pockets of the millions of Americans and small businesses that were illegally cheated out of their hard-earned money by Donald Trump,” she wrote in a statement.

Main Street Alliance, a national trade group representing small businesses, called for the revenue collected under the tariffs to be returned to small businesses.

“If the authority was unlawful, the collections were unlawful,” Executive Director Richard Trent said in a statement. “Every penny taken from small businesses under this framework should be returned.”

Attention turns to Congress

With the court ruling that taxing power lies with Congress, efforts to codify the tariffs Trump had applied could become a priority for Republican lawmakers.

“No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements with countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on social media. “Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.”

Adrian Smith, a Nebraska Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee’s subpanel on trade, said Congress should work with the president to legislate tariffs.

“Nebraska’s farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers create world-leading products and deserve reliable access to global markets,” he said. “I am committed to working with the administration to deliver long-term certainty through comprehensive and enforceable trade agreements. The President has made clear his intention to use every available tool to secure strong deals, but only Congress can ensure that these agreements provide lasting stability beyond any single administration.”

Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, though, said in a social media post that the ruling would severely hamper efforts to rebalance trade, and called for Congress to codify the tariffs.

“SCOTUS’s outrageous ruling handcuffs our fight against unfair trade that has devastated American workers for decades,” he wrote. “These tariffs protected jobs, revived manufacturing, and forced cheaters like China to pay up. Now globalists win, factories (sic) investments may reverse, and American workers lose again. This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!”

Democratic lawmakers praised the court’s decision, while blasting the tariffs as a matter of policy.

“This is a win for the wallets of every American consumer,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “Trump’s chaotic and illegal tariff tax made life more expensive and our economy more unstable. Families paid more. Small businesses and farmers got squeezed. Markets swung wildly. We’ve said from day one: a president cannot ignore Congress and unilaterally slap tariffs on Americans. That overreach failed.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, called the decision “a win for farmers, small businesses, and hardworking, middle-class families across the country,” he said in a statement. 

“Trump’s illegal and chaotic tariffs have harmed American consumers and businesses, leaving them to foot the bill for rising prices due to Trumpflation,” the Oregon Democrat added. “While Trump continues his ‘families lose, billionaires win’ agenda, we’re using every tool at our disposal to fight back against his reckless policies and build an economy where families thrive, and billionaires pay their fair share.”

Arguments were heard in November

The justices heard arguments in early November in what was the first major case of the second Trump term to move beyond the court’s emergency docket and be heard on the merits of the case.

Small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general led the legal challenges against Trump’s tariffs in the two separate cases, consolidated before the Supreme Court. They alleged Trump usurped taxing power, which belongs to Congress as outlined in Article I of the Constitution.

Victor Schwartz, founder and president of the family-owned, New York-based wine and spirits importer VOS Selections led the small business plaintiffs, which included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.

State attorneys general who sued included those from Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.

Two Illinois-based toy makers that primarily manufacture products in Asia filed a separate challenge.

For nearly three hours on Nov. 5, the justices dissected the language of IEEPA, a 1970s-era sanctions law that Trump invoked during the first year of his term in a series of emergency declarations and proclamations triggering import taxes on goods from nearly every country.

The high-profile case drew Cabinet officials to the court, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. 

Members of Congress also attended. Among the crowded rows were U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

‘Liberation day’

Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA via executive order in February and March on products from China, Canada and Mexico, declaring the countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggled into the United States.

The president escalated the emergency tariffs April 2, which he dubbed “liberation day,” when he declared trade imbalances a national emergency. In addition to a new baseline 10% global tariff, Trump announced hefty additional duties on products from countries that export more goods to the U.S. than they import from U.S. suppliers.

The White House calculations baffled economists, as the administration proposed steep duties on close trading partners — including 20% on products from the European Union, 25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan and 46% on Vietnam. 

Inexplicably he also announced a 50% tariffs on goods from the landlocked, 11,000-square-mile African nation of Lesotho, and 10% on the Heard and McDonald Islands, only inhabited by penguins and seals.

Trump’s announcement crashed markets, wiping trillions of dollars away in just a matter of days. He relented and delayed most of the tariffs, but escalated a trade war with China — shooting up the levy to 125%, and eventually to 145%.

The administration’s trade war with China cooled a bit in May, but left the rate on some products at an effective 55%.

Trump maintains his tariffs have forced the hand of other governments to invest in the U.S. in exchange for lower tariffs. For example, Trump officials claimed victory in a framework deal with Japan that lowered duties on Japanese products to 15%, from 25%, with a promise from Japan to invest $550 billion in the U.S.

As recently as late August, Trump imposed an extra 25% tariff on goods imported from India, bringing the total tariffs on Indian products to 50%, because of the country’s usage of Russian oil. 

In early August, Trump slapped a 40% tax on all Brazilian goods after he disagreed with the country’s prosecution of its former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.

WASHINGTON — A handful of House Republicans tanked a procedural vote Tuesday night that would have kept intact a ban on congressional action against President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs.

Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Kevin Kiley of California joined all Democrats in a 214-217 vote  blocking language to continue a prohibition on any House votes challenging the unprecedented import taxes Trump triggered under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA. Rep. Gregory Murphy, R-N.C., did not vote.

“I don’t like putting the important work of the House on pause, but Congress needs to be able to debate on tariffs. Tariffs have been a ‘net negative’ for the economy and are a significant tax that American consumers, manufacturers, and farmers are paying,” Bacon said in a post on X following the vote. 

“Article I of the Constitution places authority over taxes and tariffs with Congress for a reason, but for too long, we have handed that authority to the executive branch. It’s time for Congress to reclaim that responsibility. I also oppose using the rules votes to legislate. I want the debate and the right to vote on tariffs,” Bacon continued, referring to the “rules” vote, a procedural vote often taken prior to advancing legislation.

The provision, tucked in a vote to advance three unrelated bills, would have continued the ban until July 31.

Trump declared national emergencies on numerous occasions in 2025. The resolution, enacted in September, effectively prohibited any congressional counteraction to Trump’s emergency tariffs imposed on Feb. 1, April 2, July 30 and Aug. 6. 

The president targeted imports from a host of trading partners on those dates, including establishing steep tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, Brazil and India.

Trump’s novel use of IEEPA to immediately trigger tariffs on global imports is currently under review at the U.S. Supreme Court after a group of small businesses sued the president. The justices heard oral arguments in early November, and an opinion has been expected for months.