type: timeline_event
On March 18, 2026, a coalition of 18 state attorneys general led by New York AG Letitia James sent a formal demand to congressional leadership calling for legislation that would require automatic refunds of approximately $166 billion in tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Supreme Court had ruled on February 20 that the administration's use of IEEPA to impose broad trade tariffs was unlawful, but the administration had neither returned the collected duties nor ceased imposing new trade barriers.
The coalition argued that American consumers and businesses had been forced to pay tariffs that the nation's highest court had declared unconstitutional, and that Congress had both the authority and the obligation to mandate restitution. The letter detailed how the tariffs had driven up prices on consumer goods, disrupted supply chains, and imposed disproportionate costs on small businesses and lower-income households that spent a larger share of their income on imported goods.
In the weeks following the Supreme Court ruling, the administration had pivoted to imposing tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows temporary import surcharges in response to balance-of-payments emergencies. The attorneys general were already challenging the Section 122 tariffs in a separate lawsuit, arguing that no legitimate balance-of-payments emergency existed and that the administration was simply cycling through statutory authorities to maintain trade barriers the courts had struck down.
The demand for refund legislation reflected a broader strategy among state attorneys general to use every available legal and political lever against administration policies they viewed as unlawful. California AG Rob Bonta and Minnesota AG Keith Ellison were among the most prominent co-signers, and the coalition included attorneys general from states spanning the political spectrum, united by the economic harm the tariffs had inflicted on their constituents.