With $4.5B on the line, Pennsylvania businesses seek tariff refunds

With $4.5B on the line, Pennsylvania businesses seek tariff refunds

• By Whitney Downard, Pennsylvania Capital-Star

This story was originally published by the Pennsylvania Capital Star. 

The Bunyaad Marketplace in Lititz, where colorful, hand-knotted carpets from Pakistan are stacked nearly to the hip and hang on the walls, has an explicit fair trade mission to sell its inventory at a price that pays its artisans a living wage for their craftsmanship.

Co-owner and Director of Operations Jenni Leister proudly shares that over half of their rugs are made by women living in the villages of her husband’s homeland, even if it comes at a higher cost. But combining that expense with tariffs has forced the Lancaster County company to be “scrappy.”

“We find ways here in North America to minimize our overhead, to do things as economically as possible,” said Leister. “When the tariffs came in for a lot of the fair traders that we work with, we certainly did see costs go up and we knew how hard that was hitting them.”

The dollars needed to get a $12,000 rug shipment across the ocean “was hard to stomach” knowing “what amazing good that could do in Pakistan.”

“Our customers are feeling the rising costs everywhere — everything from when they go into their local department store or their local grocery store,” said Leister. “This is not a way to make the world a more just and equitable place for all.”

Products from Pakistan and textile furnishings, in particular, were both taxed at a higher rate under a now-defunct class of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump during his second term. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a category of fees in February, they were quickly replaced, but some small businesses are calling for refunds.

We Pay the Tariffs — a coalition of more than 1,100 small businesses, including Bunyaad Marketplace and 42 others in Pennsylvania — reported that companies in the commonwealth had paid $4.5 billion in “illegal” tariffs nearly one year after their announcement on “Liberation Day.”

Leister couldn’t put a price tag on the amount of tariffs paid through Bunyaad, but said the store staffing is at “the barest of bones” and they’ve pulled back advertising dollars. Americans feeling a financial pinch may already hesitate to buy a high-quality rug, so Leister said they’ve tried to avoid a price increase.

“We are constantly juggling, ‘How much of the increased cost of things can we take before we must pass it on to our customers?’ Because we also want to stay in business. Because if we’re not in business, we’re not supporting the artisans that we work with,” said Leister. “But on the other hand, we also realize that we are a choice business. It’s not food.”

Tariff background

Trump claimed he had the authority to impose those tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, but justices on the nation’s highest court disagreed. Their ruling, however, didn’t address how, or if, any of the collected money would be returned.

Refunds are a top priority for We Pay the Tariffs, with Executive Director Dan Anthony saying that the money was “taken illegally in the first place.”

“There is a lot of holding the feet to the fire here and saying, ‘This money should be refunded. It should be refunded quickly,’” said Anthony.

Shortly after courts took away the first option, Trump advanced tariffs under the Trade Act of 1974, further adding to market chaos. We Pay the Tariffs reported that Pennsylvania importers have paid $7.8 billion across all tariffs between March 2025 and January 2026.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has joined 23 other state attorneys general and governors in a lawsuit filed at the Court of International Trade challenging the Section 122 tariffs as unconstitutional and in violation of federal law. These fees are limited to 150 days.

Anthony maintained that the federal government knows who paid what in terms of tariffs through its customs oversight, and a refund process should be simple enough not to require small businesses to contract with attorneys to recoup their losses.

“Requiring the government to tap into the knowledge that it already has to expedite these processes, rather than shifting the burden to the small business employers … that’s what we’re trying to avoid,” said Anthony. “This has been, for a lot of them, an all-consuming issue to deal with. We shouldn’t now have an all-consuming process to get that money back that was taken illegally in the first place.”

Additionally, he noted it’s not clear if businesses will have to pay taxes on tariff refunds.