We Pay the Tariffs: Putting Small Business Harm into the Legal Record

In 2025, a Supreme Court case challenging the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs raised fundamental questions about trade authority and executive power. While the legal arguments were complex, the economic reality behind them was simple: small businesses were paying the price. We Pay the Tariffs helped bring that reality into the Court’s record.

We Pay the Tariffs filed an amicus brief to ensure that legal arguments against the IEEPA tariffs were grounded in real-world experience. The brief featured detailed stories from small businesses describing how tariffs affected their costs, pricing, hiring decisions, and long-term planning. These accounts added a human dimension to constitutional and statutory questions that are often discussed in the abstract.

To ensure that no voice was excluded, the brief also included an annex signed by more than 700 small businesses. This annex demonstrated that the harms described in the brief were not isolated incidents, but part of a widespread and shared experience among businesses across industries and regions.

By elevating firsthand accounts and assembling broad support, WPTT helped ensure that the Court was presented with both the legal and economic consequences of the tariffs imposed under IEEPA.

The amicus effort reflected a core principle of the coalition: trade policy debates should not happen without the voices of the businesses most directly affected. In 2025, those voices were not just heard — they were entered into the permanent legal record.