Markey Letter on Tariffs to SBA and Commerce (Aug. 21, 2025)
- Issuer
- Congressional materials
- Document type
- 2025 08 21 Markey Calls To Sba White House Ranking Member Markey Calls On Trump Administra
- Date
- 2025-08-21
- Case
- 2025 08 21 Markey Calls To Sba White House Ranking Member Markey Calls On Trump Administration To
Summary
A letter dated August 21, 2025 from Edward J. Markey, Ranking Member of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran. The letter calls on the agencies to immediately establish and publicize procedures for refunding tariffs paid by American businesses if the Supreme Court rejects the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). It recounts the tariffs announced April 2, 2025, including a universal ten percent tariff, and states that the D.C. District Court and the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled against the administration. The letter argues that failing to prepare for refunds would worsen disruption for small businesses, and it cites news reports in footnotes.
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Full text
August 21, 2025
The Honorable Kelly Loeffler The Honorable Howard Lutnick
Administrator Secretary
U.S. Small Business Administration U.S. Department of Commerce
409 3rd Street, SW 1401 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20416 Washington, DC 20230
The Honorable Jamieson Greer Mr. Stephen Miran
Ambassador Chair
U.S. Trade Representative Council of Economic Advisers
600 17th Street, NW 1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006 Washington, DC 20500
Dear Administrator Loeffler, Secretary Lutnick, Ambassador Greer, and Chair Miran,
The Trump administration’s tariffs have sown chaos across our economy. Now, after six
months of trying to keep up with the president’s ever-changing trade policies, American
businesses are bracing for the possibility of a massive about-face as courts consider whether to
reject the dubious legal underpinnings of the president’s trade war. Two lower courts have
already ruled decisively against the administration’s claim of unlimited “emergency powers,”
which the president has used to justify the arbitrary imposition of tariffs against every country on
the planet. A source close to the White House quoted by Politico placed the odds of the
administration’s opponents prevailing before the Supreme Court “as way higher than 50-50,” 1 so
the possibility of a complete reversal of this disastrous policy is not something the president can
ignore. I call on your agencies to immediately establish and publicize procedures for refunding
tariffs paid by American businesses in the event the high court rejects the president’s unlawful
trade war.
On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced the most sweeping tariffs the United States
has seen since the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, targeting every U.S.
trading partner and causing prices for domestic retailers, manufacturers, and consumers to rise. 2
1
Ari Hawkins, How Trump’s $150 billion tariff brag could backfire, Politico (August 6, 2025),
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/how-trumps-150-billion-brag-could-backfire-00494882.
2
Josh Schafer, Fed's Preferred Inflation Gauge Shows Price Increases Accelerated in June Amid Tariff Uncertainty,
Yahoo Finance (July 31, 2025), https://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds-preferred-inflation-gauge-shows-price-
increases-accelerated-in-june-amid-tariff-uncertainty-124028246.html.
Page 2
These tariffs included a universal ten percent tariff on all imports along with country-specific
“reciprocal” tariffs, which the president claims are permitted under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). Wall Street’s negative reaction this spring forced the
administration to delay implementation for 90 days until July 9th; the president’s inability to
secure deals pushed that deadline to August 1st. 3 Even now that the deadline has passed, we
continue to hear the president shifting his position from day to day.
Both the D.C. District Court 4 and the U.S. Court of International Trade 5 rejected the
administration’s blatant attempt to ignore the Constitution, which gives Congress, not the
president, the power to impose tariffs and regulate foreign commerce. 6 During a subsequent
hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit at the end of July, judges
expressed significant doubts about the administration’s position, which claimed unlimited power
to levy tariffs in response to anything the president deems a national emergency. Petitioners
made it clear that IEEPA sets the bar for emergency powers quite high: it must rise to the level of
“an unusual or extraordinary threat.”
The president’s justifications for levying tariffs have more to do with his own personal
vendettas and score-settling than with any actual crisis threatening the country. Skepticism about
the legality of his actions extends across the political spectrum, from blue state attorneys general
to the conservative Cato Institute. 7
The president’s own lawyers admitted in their brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals that
if the administration were to lose, businesses that have paid tariffs imposed unlawfully under
IEEPA would be entitled to refunds. 8 This would pose an incredible logistical challenge, as many
tariffs are paid by third parties before being passed along to importers and their customers.
Businesses would also likely be entitled to interest on their payments, which would make these
misguided tariffs even more costly for the American taxpayer.
If the administration fails to prepare for a situation in which hundreds of billions of
dollars in tariff revenue unlawfully collected from American businesses must be repaid, it would
3
Ana Swanson & Tony Romm, Trump Reverses Course on Global Tariffs, Announcing 90-Day Pause, N.Y. Times
(Apr. 9, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/us/politics/trump-tariffs-stocks-china.html.
4
Doug Palmer & Kyle Cheney, Second federal court rules against Trump's tariffs, Politico (May 29, 2025),
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/29/second-federal-court-rules-against-trumps-tariffs-00374377.
5
Doug Palmer, Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein, Federal court strikes down Trump's tariffs on countries around the
world, Politico (May 28, 2025), https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/28/federal-court-strikes-down-trumps-
april-2-tariffs-00373843.
6
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8.
7
Cato Experts Available to Discuss IEEPA Tariffs Case, Cato Institute (July 30, 2025), https://www.cato.org/news-
releases/cato-experts-available-discuss-ieepa-tariffs-case#.
8
Ari Hawkins, How Trump’s $150 billion tariff brag could backfire, Politico (August 6, 2025),
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/how-trumps-150-billion-brag-could-backfire-00494882.
Page 3
go down as a historic act of executive malpractice, making what would already be a major,
economy-wide disruption exponentially worse. Your agencies must act now so that businesses,
especially our small businesses, are not left hanging should the courts overturn President
Trump’s destructive tariff regime.
Sincerely,
__________________________
Edward J. Markey
Ranking Member, Committee on Small
Business and Entrepreneurship
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