FedEx and Ray-Bans Maker Sued for Tariff Refunds

Last week, FedEx sued the federal government to recover the money it had paid in tariffs.

Now, the company is facing a tariff-related lawsuit of its own, the Associated Press reported Friday (Feb. 27).

The suit is one of at least two federal lawsuits — the other is against EssilorLuxottica, which makes Ray-Ban sunglasses — aiming to make sure consumers get a share of refunds businesses receive from the tariffs.

FedEx last week became the first high-profile company to sue seeking a reimbursement following the Supreme Court ruling that President Donald Trump had no authority to levy tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA).

Several other companies, including Costco, Revlon, Kawasaki and Bumble Bee Foods, had filed similar lawsuits prior to the court’s decision.

According to the AP, FedEx has said it would return any tariff refund it might receive to shippers and customers who had paid them.

The report added that the case against FedEx was filed by Matthew Reiser of Miami, who argues that the company’s pledge “creates no legally enforceable obligation and is expressly contingent on future government and court guidance that may never materialize.”

In the other lawsuit, Nathan Ward of New York says that he purchased Ray-Bans last August that were priced higher than in the past, indicating a tariff surcharge, and that EssilorLuxottica “continues to collect and has not refunded the tariff surcharges it collected from consumers.”

PYMNTS has contacted  EssilorLuxottica for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

“Our intent is straightforward: if refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges,” FedEx said in a statement to PYMNTS. “When that will happen and the exact process for requesting and issuing refunds will depend in part on future guidance from the government and the court.”

Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School, told the AP he expects these to be the first of several similar consumer lawsuits. He added that while it’s not clear how legally viable these suits are, they do pressure businesses to share whatever refunds they happen to secure.

While the Supreme Court ruling found the tariffs illegal, it did not address what happens to the duties companies have already paid, PYMNTS wrote last week.

“That omission is more than procedural, and it can leave companies navigating a gray zone in which potential tariff refunds exist in theory, yet lack a defined administrative pathway,” the report said.

“In many industries, tariffs imposed over the past several years have already been passed through to customers, renegotiated into supplier contracts, or capitalized into long-term inventory strategies. The financial record is settled even if the legal one is not. Recovering duties, should a mechanism emerge, will require untangling transactions that were never designed to be reversed.”