MN small businesses seeking refunds on tariffs

A lot of small business owners are finding it hard to get refunds on tariffs they've paid that the Supreme Court later found to be illegal. And now there's a new bill from a Minnesota congresswoman that could help. Our Corinne Hoggard got the details on that bill and asked several small business owners if it could make their jobs easier. President Trump's tariffs cost small businesses about $35 billion, according to the Center for American Progress. And for businesses like Mischief Toys, there's been a cost on connections as well. We've lost suppliers from Canada that used to make fidget toys for us. We just can't get them anymore. Same thing with these knitting kits we used to get from England. Can't get them anymore. I don't know if there's a way to fix that. The money, at least, could come back. The Supreme Court ruled the government needs to refund $166 billion worth of tariff payments. Target's already gotten back nearly a billion dollars. Walmart got $2.9 billion. So small business owners have gotten their payments back too, but a lot of them are confused by the process and feeling left behind. They don't have the people power to put in. To deal with this huge administrative burden that's been layered on to all of their other challenges. Representative Kelly Morrison and two other members of Congress authored a bill to create a small business tariff relief hotline. The idea is to give business owners a direct line to the Small Business Administration for help navigating refunds and reporting the impact of tariffs. The Small Business Administration is supposed to be advocating. For small businesses, and so they need to have the information to understand what small businesses are experiencing on the ground in real time. At Mischief, Dan Marshall says tariffs have made budgeting unpredictable and driven up prices. He's paying a tariff premium on a lot of his purchases, but he's not the actual importer, so he could use help from a hotline. I think it would be incredibly helpful to have somebody At the federal level, trying to keep track of what small businesses are going through as a result of these tariffs and also to answer some questions. Morrison told me she thinks this is a bipartisan issue and Republicans also want to help small businesses. And so she's confident it could actually get passed during this lame duck congressional session that's going for the next couple of months. If it doesn't, she'll bring it back in January when Democrats take the majority and the gavel. In Minneapolis, Corinne Hoggart, Fox 9.