The tariffs lost in court and won at the border, on the same day.

On Wednesday evening, a three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade ruled unanimously that Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority under a 1977 emergency-powers law, and permanently enjoined nearly every duty imposed since April 2.

The administration appealed within hours. By Thursday, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had administratively stayed that injunction — and a second court, the US District Court in Washington, separately ruled the same tariffs unlawful for two Illinois toy importers, then paused its own ruling for fourteen days.

Customs and Border Protection kept collecting. Importers kept paying. The only thing that changed overnight was the legal odds a refund might someday be owed.

The tariffs lost in court and won at the border, on the same day.

The mechanism protecting the tariffs is procedural, not substantive — an administrative stay freezes the injunction while the Federal Circuit decides whether to grant a longer one, which can itself take weeks.

Government lawyers told the courts they intend to fight the case “all the way to the Supreme Court,” a timeline that keeps duties flowing through an entire election-cycle news window before any refund becomes real.

Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and autos were untouched by either ruling; only the IEEPA-based worldwide and trafficking tariffs were in question, leaving importers to sort which duty line on their bill was even part of the fight.

One case can end the policy. It cannot yet end the invoice.

Companies that already paid IEEPA duties are being told by trade counsel to start building the paper trail now — liquidation status, payment records, protest filings — for a refund that may not arrive for a year or more.

That is working capital sitting frozen in a legal pipeline instead of funding inventory, payroll, or the next order, and it stays frozen for every business too small to litigate its way to the front of the line.