according to one estimate<\/a>, and businesses and importers are now hoping to get that money back.<\/p>\nBut the victory is complicated. The court did not order any restitution, nor did it set out a refund mechanism.<\/p>\n
The Liberty Justice Center has filed motions in both the Federal Circuit and the Court of International Trade pushing to get the refund process started, but there\u2019s no clear timeline for when, or whether, that money actually flows back to the businesses that paid it. And, in the meantime, Trump has signed a new suite of tariffs under a different legal authority to replace the ones the court struck down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean the reality is we’re exactly in the same place,\u201d Schwartz said, \u201cin terms of running my business every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he said, a win is a win and this was a big one.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery journey begins with the first step or however philosophical you wanna get,\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cI think the first step can be the hardest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tariff chaos<\/p>\n
Schwartz founded VOS Selections nearly 40 years ago with a simple idea \u2014 find the wines and spirits that nobody else was importing, the bottles coming from family farms in places people hadn\u2019t thought to look. Today, the company has about 20 employees and works with vineyards across 16 countries and five continents.<\/p>\n
The business can sound romantic. Wine tastings and strolls in picturesque French vineyards. Schwartz laughs when he hears this.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI get up, put my tuxedo on, a fresh, clean shirt, and then we start with some breakfast champagne,\u201d he said. \u201cNo. It\u2019s roll up your sleeves, nuts and bolts, warehouse boxes \u2026 There’s accounts receivable, there’s inventory, there’s management headaches, regulatory headaches on top of that, you know, it’s like any business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcohol importers operate in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, he said. There\u2019s federal licensing and state licensing, rules about who they can sell to and how they can price their products. There are also plenty of taxes to pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine. That’s what it is. Not a problem,\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cThat’s been a stable situation for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Trump complicated all of that with tariffs. VOS Selections managed during the first round in 2019. That was a more limited, targeted regime, Schwartz said, and the economy was in better shape.<\/p>\n
When it became clear that Trump might win a second term, the wine and spirits industry started organizing.\u200a \u201cWe did not want to get caught flatfooted,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n
None of it prepared them for what came next. Schwartz describes it as \u201cabsolute chaos\u201d \u2014 blanket levies that lurched up and down, were applied to countries, then removed and then reapplied, seemingly on a whim.<\/p>\n
The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce estimated that small businesses in the New York City metro area absorbed somewhere along the lines of $4.5 billion annually in added tariff costs, according to a report released in February. <\/p>\n
Chamber President Jessica Walker said 5,000 businesses closed when the tariffs were fully implemented in the second quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the first time in many years that we saw a net loss of businesses,\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n
Between the tariffs and the simultaneous decline in the dollar, Schwartz said he faced close to a 30% increase in costs. He increased prices about 7% or 8% and absorbed the rest himself by cutting inventory and \u200aputting off new products and potential suppliers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the idea of business should be expanding, but it’s been contracting,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n
The approach<\/p>\n
It was early last year, over brunch with a visiting family member, when the conversation turned, as it always did, to tariffs. The visitor\u2019s former law professor was mounting a legal challenge to the tariffs. Did Schwartz want an introduction?<\/p>\n
By the following week he was on the phone with the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian-leaning group with its own ideological interest in limiting executive power. Shortly after that, they asked if he\u2019d be the lead plaintiff.<\/p>\n
Sara Albrecht, who runs the center\u2019s 12-person operation, said the organization knew it would take some work to \u201cfind people brave enough\u201d to take on the administration, but Schwartz made for a good plaintiff for reasons beyond just his willingness to show up.<\/p>\n
VOS Selections imports from enough countries that the case wouldn\u2019t lose its legal standing if the administration dropped tariffs on one country or another. Plus, his situation made the central argument almost self-explanatory. The administration has promised the tariffs would bring manufacturing back to the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you manufacture Spanish wine in the United States?\u201d Albrecht asked. \u201cYou can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case moved through the courts quickly, by legal standards, first the Court of International Trade, then the Federal Circuit, then the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear it on an expedited basis.<\/p>\n
Schwartz attended every hearing; he was in the Supreme Court chamber for oral arguments. Sitting there, he said, he felt the weight of the importance of law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a reason that we create spaces like this just from an architectural perspective,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s this very neoclassical building \u2026 the justices are up on a dais, so they’re so, they’re raised up. I mean, everything about it, it’s very serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time the arguments ended, Schwartz said he was feeling confident. The wait for a decision, however, was hard. When a ruling finally came on Feb. 20, Schwartz was at home with his daughter, Chloe, on a Zoom call with the legal team.<\/p>\n
As Chief Justice Roberts began reading the opinion, they all began looking at each other and parsing his words.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you saying? What does this mean?\u201d Schwartz asked \u201cDoes this mean we won?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess it does,\u201d somebody replied.<\/p>\n
Schwartz had a hip replacement surgery scheduled for a few weeks later. He danced anyway, bad hip and all.<\/p>\n
The next night, he had dinner with his family and opened an old bottle of Domaine du Banneret, a Ch\u00e2teauneuf-du-Pape he has been importing for two generations.<\/p>\n
\u2018Confusion. Mass confusion\u2019<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling, while sweeping, still had its limits.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI think there’s a sigh of relief on the one hand,\u201d said Walker, the Manhattan Chamber president. But more than anything it is confusion, mass confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Businesses are trying to understand whether they\u2019re eligible for refunds, what documentation they need, and how long the process will take.<\/p>\n
Albrecht, from the Liberty Justice Center, is trying to urge patience. The Court of International Trade, which typically handles 50 to 60 tariff cases a year, has now received more than 900, she said.<\/p>\n
The new Section 122 tariffs, Trump\u2019s replacement regime, are more predictable than what came before. They come with rules and procedures the administration has to follow. They\u2019re also set to expire after 150 days unless Congress votes to extend them. But at 15% across the board, they still represent a significant burden for importers like Schwartz.<\/p>\n
Trump has been blunt about his intentions. \u201cI guess tariff refunds have to get litigated for the next two years,\u201d he said at one press conference. The Liberty Justice Center has already filed additional motions pushing for a quicker resolution.<\/p>\n
Schwartz’s phone hasn\u2019t stopped ringing since the court’s decision. The media, domestic and foreign, all want to talk to him. And he has thousands of fans, all writing to thank him \u2013 more than enough to drown out any hate that\u2019s come his way.<\/p>\n
Chloe, his daughter, is one of them. \u201cHe rose to the occasion when so many other, more powerful people and organizations let themselves be bullied by this administration,\u201d she said in an email.<\/p>\n
Through all of this, Schwartz has become something of a symbol of what the overlooked can do when the powerful won’t.<\/p>\n
Even now, Albrecht said, larger companies are staying quiet even as they line up for a refund. She asked one major bulk retailer if it might consider supporting her center’s work. The response: It didn\u2019t meet their philanthropic priorities. She likened the business owners that joined the suit to the Founding Fathers, tradesmen and businessmen who believed in a constitutional order.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really kind of poetic that in the 250th year, we have another group of small businessmen who are standing up,\u201d she said. \u201cSounds very corny, but \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Schwartz finds that framing a little much. This win, he said, is only the end of the beginning of this fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we have shown that there are chinks in the armor,\u201d he said. \u201cThe person in charge of this country is not a king and does not have absolute authority.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was early 2025 when the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based constitutional law nonprofit, came looking for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-149571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}