Key Takeaways:
After the Supreme Court struck down the Trump tariffs, beauty brands including L’Oréal and e.l.f. Beauty filed suits seeking refunds. Importers who have already filed CIT lawsuits are in a strong position to receive refunds.Dame refunded customers who paid the brand’s self-imposed Trump tariff surcharge, totaling around $8,000.
Early American colonists argued that there should be no taxation without representation. Today, American businesses are banding together under a different rallying cry: no tariffs without Congressional approval.
In February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. The decision struck down broad tariffs on imports from countries including Canada, Mexico, and China, emphasizing that taxing power belongs to Congress, not the executive branch.
But the administration can’t put the tariff genie back in the bottle. President Trump imposed these tariffs, American businesses paid them, and in March, a federal judge ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to begin processing tariff refunds, which are expected to include interest. Penn Wharton Budget Model economists estimate that reversing the IEEPA tariffs could generate up to $175 billion in refunds.
In the days that followed the Supreme Court’s ruling, importers began filing suits in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT). Companies including L’Oréal, Sol de Janeiro, Revlon, e.l.f. Beauty, Schick, Conair, Bath & Body Works, and Dyson argued that they were importers of record on goods subject to the now-invalid tariffs and are therefore entitled to refunds. All companies declined to comment for this story.
What began as a tool intended to combat perceived unfair trade practices by foreign countries has opened the door to one of the largest potential refund fights in modern trade history as American businesses gear up to take their own government to court to get their money back. But how will the tariff refunds work, and what do beauty brands need to do to ensure they get paid back? BeautyMatter spoke with lawyers and beauty executives to understand how the beauty industry is navigating the emerging refund process, and what steps brands should be taking now to preserve their rights to potential refunds.
The Tariff Refund Process
The Supreme Court ruling may have settled the legality of the tariffs, but the process of getting that money back is only just beginning.
In March, a CIT judge issued an amended order in Atmus Filtration, Inc. v. United States, directing CBP to liquidate or reliquidate all entries subject to now-invalid IEEPA tariffs—including those that had already been finalized—without applying those duties. The order applies to refunds even for companies that didn’t file, but the Justice Department has said it plans to appeal.
The government’s position is that importers must file a lawsuit at the CIT to be eligible for refunds. Importers who have already filed CIT lawsuits are in a strong position to receive refunds because the government has effectively acknowledged that refunds are owed to them.
The main uncertainty for these companies is timing, not whether they’ll be paid.
The CIT order aims to eliminate the need for individual importers to file protests, covering all importers, not just those who filed lawsuits. While the CIT directed action, it remains unclear whether automatic refunds will be issued or if importers must file claims with CBP to receive a refund. The order is currently suspended as CBP builds out its new refund system, known as the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), which includes a claim portal and automated recalculation.
In March, CBP official Brandon Lord claimed that the development of the refund system was between 60% and 85% complete. He did not provide a start date for applications, but the agency previously indicated a 45-day goal, which ends in late April. Experts claim that refunds are likely “months away” at minimum, and could be further delayed if the government appeals, which it is expected to do. The deadline to appeal runs through early May 2026.
Ashley Akers, a partner at Holland & Knight who is helping lead tariff refund efforts, said beauty companies should not confuse the constitutional ruling or the amended order in the CIT with an automatic refund check. This is not like the 2020 stimulus checks: if you don’t raise your hand for a refund—either with the CBP’s CAPE refund system, by filing a suit with CIT, or both—the government isn’t going to give it to you.
“What’s really critical for beauty companies to do now is proactively engage counsel so that they can be in line for the refunds,” Akers told BeautyMatter.
In her view, too many companies are assuming the system will sort itself out, when the administration has every incentive to slow the process. “This is a great opportunity for beauty brands and companies to get a refund, so don’t put this on the back burner,” she added. “Time is of the essence right now to assert your rights and hopefully recover a significant amount of money—with interest.”
Akers described the current moment as both a legal opportunity and a logistical race to the refund finish line, with thousands of companies of all sizes potentially eligible for a refund. The tariffs were so broad that “it’s rare that a company hasn’t paid these tariffs,” she said.
That breadth is what makes the case so consequential for beauty, where supply chains are globally fragmented. It’s common for brands to work with multiple suppliers in various countries to procure packaging, source raw materials, and manufacture finished goods, so chances are almost every brand has paid an illegal tariff within the last year. According to Akers, even brands that think their exposure is modest should take a closer look.
In terms of cost, Akers explained that different law firms have varying pricing structures to accommodate companies of different sizes, including pure contingency (in which the law firm receives a percentage of the refund), flat fees, hourly rates, or hybrids, such as a small flat fee plus a smaller contingency. Filing‑related flat fees are often quoted in the $30,000 to $80,000 range, but numbers are shifting quickly, and fees can vary significantly from law firm to law firm.
In terms of timeline, she believes this process could take years. The government isn’t exactly racing to pay back the hundreds of billions that the courts now say it owes, and in fact, they’re betting that they won’t have to pay back all of it.
“The government already has that money, and their hope is that companies think this is going to be impossible to collect,” said Akers. “We’re doing our best to expedite it, keep the pressure on and keep the lawsuits coming to incentivize the government to refund quickly.”
Despite the government dragging its feet, Akers encourages companies to take action, because their work will be worth it in the end.
“If you’re an importer that has filed at the CIT, you’re sitting in a very good position to get a refund … I’m highly confident that importers who have filed at the CIT will get a refund,” she said. “For those that haven’t filed at the CIT … it’s likely that there’s going to be litigation that could last a long time, and whether they ultimately prevail or not is undecided.”
Tariff Refunds for Brands and Customers
Chris Hobson, President and CEO of Rare Beauty Brands, which owns and operates brands including Patchology and Kate Somerville Skincare, has already begun pursuing tariff refunds through the CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal to recover costs in the “high six figures,” but has not filed suit.
“We’re certainly owed a large amount of money for the size of our business, but my judgment is that it’s not enough to take the extra step and expense of filing a lawsuit,” Hobson told BeautyMatter.
As the company waits for CBP’s new refund claims portal, Rare Beauty Brands has focused on getting its internal documentation in order—centralizing all tariff-related invoices and payments and building a detailed spreadsheet tracking what has been paid. Still, Hobson is keeping his expectations low.
“I’m firmly in the camp of hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” he said. “I’m not thinking about it as lottery ticket odds, but I’m certainly not counting on it either.”
If Rare Beauty Brands were to recover those tariffs, he estimates it would add roughly two percentage points to last year’s gross margin, which is significant. But for Hobson, tariffs also hit other parts of the business. He estimated the tariff upheaval caused a 10% to 15% productivity loss across his company as teams modeled price increases, revised forecasts, and dealt with the operational fallout. In the end, Rare Beauty Brands instituted a modest price increase—the first in 10 years since the company’s founding.
“It’s not only a tax on the business,” he said. “It ends up being a tax on the consumer, but it’s also a tax on everyone’s time. It’s just a waste of time.”
No company was immune to the financial impact tariffs had on the bottom line, but smaller, independent brands were less prepared to absorb the additional costs.
Last year, sexual wellness brand Dame paid more than $120,000 in tariffs, which co-founder and CEO Alexandra Fine described as a “massive hit” for the brand’s six-person team. To stay afloat and call attention to the additional cost, Dame added a visible tariff surcharge at checkout, charging customers an additional $5 per product under a line item labeled “Trump’s tariffs.”
“Some people hated it and questioned why I was making things political, but I’m not being political. I’m just advocating for my business,” Fine told BeautyMatter. “I want my business to survive, and I want to be a good boss to the people I employ, and to throw that on a small business without any real notice.… That makes a huge impact on the business.”
The fee didn’t even fully cover the added costs, according to Fine, but it certainly helped the situation without the brand having to raise prices on its products. Last year, many brands, including e.l.f. Beauty, Naturium, Glow Recipe, Amika, Saie, and The INKEY List, raised prices, blaming Trump’s tariffs.
While Dame’s method was certainly unconventional, it turned out to be quite useful in the end. Earlier this year, when the tariffs were struck down, Dame announced it would refund customers who had paid the surcharge, returning about $8,000 to them.
In Fine’s view, once the government’s tariff regime was deemed unlawful, keeping money explicitly collected under that line item no longer sat right with her. Brands that added explicit surcharge lines, like Dame, have a much easier argument for customer refunds than companies that simply pushed through list-price increases.
“Because we charged directly for the Trump tariffs, that’s what made it feel so clear and obvious to me that we had to give out refunds,” she explained. “Every company is different, and there is no 100% right way of handling this situation right now.”
For brands that implemented broad price increases, those changes are nearly impossible to unwind cleanly. To date, none of the companies that raised prices in response to the tariffs have announced plans to return them to their pre-Trump tariff levels.
According to Fine, Dame isn’t planning to file a suit to get a refund for the tariffs the company paid last year.
“I don’t want to put too much of my time into something that may or may not happen,” she said. “I’m going to keep functioning like it’s not going to happen and be pleasantly surprised if it does.”
