Looking back to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promises, two currently stand out: He was going to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and he pledged to impose sweeping tariffs.
When he didn’t make good on the first vow, several members of the president’s party in Congress bucked him to help pass the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. When President Trump fulfilled his second promise regarding tariffs, the Supreme Court found them illegal, but failed to create a clear remedy for the thousands of American businesses that paid roughly $175 billion in tariff revenue collected under that illegal system.
Could a bipartisan coalition in Congress emerge once again to right an egregious wrong? Perhaps it’s time for a “Tariff Transparency and Reparations Act.”
In the face of Trump administration intransigence around releasing the Epstein files, Congress passed legislation to force it to do so. Due to that effort, the Justice Department released millions of files. The Epstein files have been an albatross for the administration for months. When the public pressure to release the files became overwhelming, and the administration’s position utterly indefensible, the president succumbed to that pressure — only when it appeared there was no viable path to continue resisting congressional action.
Similarly, there is nothing the administration can do to hold onto the money collected through those illegal tariffs, other than to fight a similarly indefensible and illegitimate rear-guard action through the courts. And that is exactly what the administration appears poised to do.
Speaking last week before the Economic Club of Dallas, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressed his “sense” that payment of the revenue from the tariffs “could be dragged out for weeks, months, years.” He would add, “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it.”
Trump has echoed these sentiments: “We’ll end up being in court for the next five years.”
Congress can move, and move quickly, to make American businesses and taxpayers whole.
In other words, Trump is treating this $175 billion like a bad debt on one of his failed real estate ventures: You can take him to court, but he’ll fight having to pay a penny tooth and nail. What makes this fight different, however, is now he has the full weight and power of the Justice Department behind him, doing his bidding at public expense.
But the administration shouldn’t have the last word on the subject. And Congress shouldn’t sit idly by while the administration treats this money like its own, forcing businesses and taxpayers to go through the trouble and expense of having to claw back what is rightfully theirs.
Just as in the case of the Epstein files, a bipartisan coalition should agree that when Americans have been victimized by lawless action — here, businesses and taxpayers who forked over billions in illegal tariffs — the administration should not stand in the way of real relief for those victims. This harm certainly pales in comparison to the damage done to the survivors at the hands of the Epstein class. Here though, it is difficult to obscure, obfuscate or ignore the perpetrator and the victims: The administration imposed lawless tariffs, and the rule of law requires it to return the fees collected to those who paid them. On Monday, a group of Democratic senators released a bill that takes steps in this direction, but it leaves the details to the administration. In the case of the Epstein files, we see where that has led us, with the administration continuing to drag its feet when it comes to releasing the files, even when ordered to do so by Congress. Instead of relying on the administration to reimburse Americans fairly and expeditiously, Congress can create an independent fund capitalized by the billions taken in as illegal tariffs. A special master can then assess these claims. When the claimant can show that they did not simply pass the costs on to their customers, they can receive a refund. If the company did not absorb the costs of the tariffs, that money could stay in the fund and serve as the basis of a rebate to taxpayers. Congress does this sort of thing with some frequency, as in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, for those exposed to the toxic chemicals at the Camp Lejeune military base, and those harmed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster through the Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund. While such interventions typically follow a national disaster, here, the disaster for the economy was the president’s illegal tariffs. And the federal government is literally holding the bag. With the illegal tariffs the administration collected, Congress can move, and move quickly, to make American businesses and taxpayers whole, and can do so without taking it on faith that the administration will follow the law.
Ray Brescia
Ray Brescia is a professor of law at Albany Law School and author of the book “The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” 
