NY governor calls for $13.5B in tariff refunds

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is calling on the Trump administration to refund approximately $13.5 billion to New York residents after the Supreme Court ruled last week that the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional. 

“These senseless and illegal tariffs were just a tax on New York consumers, small businesses and farmers — and that’s why I’m demanding a full refund,” Hochul, who is up for reelection this year, said in a statement Tuesday.

“I’ll never stop fighting for New Yorkers, and that means staying focused on putting more money back in your pockets — not ripping it away,” she added.

Her office cited Yale Budget Lab estimates that the average New York household shouldered an additional $1,751 in added costs as a result of the tariffs, totaling $13.5 billion for the state. 

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision Friday, delivered a blistering ruling against the Trump administration, rejecting the president’s expanded use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on nearly every country. 

The 1970s-era law allows the president to “regulate” imports when necessary to respond to national emergencies that pose an “unusual and extraordinary” threat, but Trump was the first to try to invoke IEEPA to impose tariffs.

“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Other Democratic governors, including California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’s JB Pritzker, have similarly called on the president to issue refunds after the court rulings. And some major U.S. companies, including FedEx and Costco, have sued the Trump administration for the full tariff refund.

The court offered no guidance, however, on the status of the $175 billion collected through tariffs, sparking debate over whether and how the funds should be returned. That question is now in the hands of lower courts, a process that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday could take “weeks or months.”