OPINION: The author of Section 301 says Trump misuses it, and the buyer keeps the receipt

The receipt in your pocket

Two truths that collide

Two things are true at once.

A tax can be ruled illegal, then refunded. And the person who paid part of it at the register may never see a cent of it again.

Between the two sits a scrap of paper. The receipt. That thermal strip we crumple at the bottom of a pocket, which fades within months and proves nothing but a price.

At the register

The beep of the register. The total. The receipt sliding out, still warm.

Nobody at the counter knows what share of the price comes from a tariff. Nobody knows under which law it was imposed. Nobody knows whether it will one day be declared illegal.

In the United States, that question is no longer theoretical. It goes to argument on September 30, before the Court of International Trade.

And the man who wrote the law at issue says it is being twisted.

That is the paradox. The text exists. So does its author. They no longer agree.

The receipt proves a price. It grants no rights.

The man who wrote the law

1974

His name is Alan Wolff.

Under Richard Nixon, he was the administration’s lead international trade lawyer. He drafted what became Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. He later served as deputy trade representative, then as deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, the Liberty Justice Center notes.

The original context, he tells CNN: the White House of the day could not figure out how to answer Japanese competition in electronics. It needed a weapon to target one country and force it to negotiate. The weapon worked. Tariffs of 100% on Japanese electronics led to an agreement.

Misused, he says

On September 25, in a CNN article, Wolff speaks like an owner. “I have a sense of ownership of the statute,” he says. “And it’s being misused.”

He goes further. In his view, President Trump’s implementation is illegal and runs against what Congress intended. “This isn’t what we intended,” he says.

This is not a partisan opponent talking. This is the author.

He is not alone. Carla Hills administered the law as U.S. trade representative. Warren Maruyama helped write its 1984 and 1988 revisions, according to the Liberty Justice Center.

A drafter. A steward. A reviser. Three memories of the same law.

When the author no longer recognizes his law, listen.

The chain of backup tariffs

February, the Supreme Court

To understand, we have to put the acts back in order.

In February 2026, the Supreme Court rules that the president had no power to impose tariffs under his emergency economic powers, the law known as IEEPA. A federal court orders the duties in question refunded.

Right after, CNN reports, Donald Trump imposes a universal 10% tariff under Section 122 of the same 1974 law. Five months later, as those duties expire, the Section 301 duties arrive.

July, forced labor

On July 23, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, acting at the president’s direction, imposes tariffs on 60 economies. The grounds: they fail to ban, or to effectively enforce a ban on, imports of goods made with forced labor.

Rates: 10% for seventeen economies, 12.5% for most of the others, with special regimes for the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Switzerland.

Same law, different target: Brazil goes to 37.5%, for human rights violations. Canada, for its part, faces 50% tariffs on some products under another law, Section 338, never used before.

February: illegal. July: forced labor.

Two grounds. One reflex. One payer.

One law falls, another takes its place. The tariff stays.

Recycling a law

The importer at customs, the buyer at the counter

So let me say where I stand.

I am on the side of the people who pay these duties: the importer at customs, then the buyer at the counter. Against the July 23 decision by Jamieson Greer, taken at Donald Trump’s direction. Because it turns a law written to target one country into a tax on sixty, five months after the Supreme Court struck down the last one.

This is not a position against tariffs as such. A border tax can be a useful weapon against a country that cheats. It is a position against recycling.

Recycling a law also recycles its bill.

A duty falls, a check goes out

Because recycling has a cost nobody puts on the price tag.

When a duty falls in court, it gets refunded. And the refund goes to whoever paid customs. Not to whoever paid the price.

The importer gets refunded. The buyer keeps the receipt.

Two payers. One check.

You paid, they cash in

Seventy percent

Look at where the money goes. The Atlanta Fed asked.

From August 10 to 21, it surveyed 1,156 business executives. The duties struck down in February add up to nearly US$170 billion, of which about US$100 billion had already been refunded by the end of July, according to the bank.

Nearly a quarter of executives believe they qualify. About 9% of the sample, weighted by employment, have already received their check. On average, it is worth 1.7% of annual revenue.

Seventeen point two

The refund goes to the importer first. The refund goes to the treasury, for 70% of firms, which keep at least part of it as cash. The refund goes to research or investment, for more than half. To customers, as discounts, for 17.2%. To executives, as bonuses, for 10.1%.

Price cuts: 14.8%. Executive bonuses: 10.1%.

One clarification, because it matters. CFO Dive writes that three companies in four will keep the money. The Atlanta Fed page says 70%. I go with the source.

Another uncomfortable detail. Publicly traded companies are more than twice as likely to have already received their refund, the bank notes. The big ones first. The small ones wait.

The check follows the customs bill, not the price tag.

Who pays a border tax

The importer first

We have to be exact about the mechanism, or the argument lies.

A tariff is a tax paid by the importer, at the border, when the goods come in. The importer writes the check to customs. So the law refunds the importer.

Then the importer passes it on. All of it, some of it, or none, depending on the market, the competition, the margins.

The customer never sees the line. The customer sees the total.

The buyer next

How much reaches the counter? No single American figure here. A clue, rather, from elsewhere: Canada’s counter-tariffs last year raised prices on targeted goods by 6%, according to a study cited by the Los Angeles Times.

And yet economist Alex Durante, of the Tax Foundation, estimates in the same paper that the new duties probably won’t change much for consumers, with costs concentrated in a few industries.

I keep both. The share passed on varies. But any share passed on is a share the buyer will see again only if the company decides so.

The law refunds customs. The market decides the rest.

Building a liability

September 30

This is where recycling becomes a debt.

On September 30, the Court of International Trade hears the cases consolidated as In re Section 301 Forced Labor Cases. Among the plaintiffs are an online spice retailer, Burlap & Barrel, and an independent watch retailer, Collective Horology, represented by the Liberty Justice Center.

The same center beat the administration before the Supreme Court in February.

Same litigator. New law. Same question.

It has also brought in Ed Gresser, a former economic policy official at the trade representative’s office, who disputes the link between the conduct blamed on sixty economies and the scale of the duties imposed.

99.4%

According to the Liberty Justice Center, the Section 301 duties reach goods that account for 99.4% of U.S. imports.

If the court strikes them down, they would in turn have to be refunded. To importers. Again.

So every backup tariff adds a new line to the public liability. A duty collected today, perhaps returned tomorrow, to someone other than the person who bore it.

Who will refund the buyer this time?

Every backup tariff is a refund waiting to happen.

Forced labor is real

Two rounds of hearings, 2,100 comments

Here is what Jamieson Greer would answer, and it deserves a full hearing.

Forced labor is real. The United States has banned imports of its products for nearly a century and enforces that ban. In Greer’s words, “decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor” from supply chains.

The process was heavy: two rounds of public hearings, more than 2,100 comments, consultations with more than 45 governments, more than 100 witnesses in July. And the law sets no rate ceiling and no time limit.

One country, not sixty

That is serious. And it does not hold.

The text of the law says “foreign country,” singular. Wolff insists: Congress delegated a targeted action against one country, to force it to negotiate. This is not an investigation of one country. It is not a negotiation. It is not leverage to force a deal.

The administration has said repeatedly, CNN reports, that its intent was to restore the universal tariffs it lost. And the calendar confirms it: Section 301 arrives at the exact moment Section 122 expires. Sara Albrecht, of the Liberty Justice Center, calls it a pretextual basis for the tariffs.

Wolff; Carla Hills, George H. W. Bush’s trade representative; and Warren Maruyama, the agency’s general counsel under Ronald Reagan, ask the court to set these duties aside as “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.” And if the goal was forced labor, Wolff adds, the law allowed a ban on trade with the offending country.

One country targeted is a law. Sixty is a tax.

Partners did move

A good move, in part

I concede this to Donald Trump, and it costs me.

The stated goal is right. Pushing partners to ban forced-labor products is a cause I defend too.

And the pressure produced something. The 10% rate applies to economies that already enforce a ban, have committed to one in a trade agreement, or have adopted a partial regime. Greer says he is encouraged by the partners that moved quickly to adopt such bans.

Discounts for customers

I also concede that not every refund sits in the bank. Some goes to customers and employees, the Atlanta Fed notes.

And I concede that the court may side with the administration. The law has no ceiling. I do not know what the judges will say. I admit it.

And yet a good goal does not make a method legal. On the objective, a good move. On the detour, a bad one.

The cause is right. The route is not.

The mirror at the counter

Look at your receipt

Back to the receipt. It has changed since the start.

In the first paragraph, it was proof of a price. Now it is the only trace left of a tax you may have paid, that a court may rule illegal, and that may be refunded to someone else.

You pay the posted price. You pay the duty inside it, in whole or in part. You pay for the silence of the receipt, which says nothing about it.

The small retailer

Look at the other end too. A spice merchant. A watch retailer. They are the ones in court on September 30.

For them, the customs bill arrives before the sale. They have to front the money, wait for the customer, adjust the price tag once, twice, without knowing whether the tax will survive the trial.

The stakes are highest for financially stretched businesses, Brent Meyer of the Atlanta Fed tells CFO Dive. For them, a refund or its absence weighs on survival.

No.

This is not a legal abstraction. It is cash flow at the end of the month.

At the end of every twisted law, there is a cash register.

Allies in the same basket

Britain at 10%

A word on the map, because the line demands it.

Among the sixty economies targeted are the United Kingdom, India and Mexico. The European Union, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Switzerland fall under a 10% or 12.5% regime, net of the most-favored-nation rate.

These are allies, or partners the West needs in the face of Beijing.

A signal to friends

Taxing your allies on forced-labor grounds tells them the rules are chosen in Washington, one target at a time.

And the buyer, in all this?

The buyer pays at the counter for a quarrel nobody asked them about.

An ally taxed. A rival watching. A buyer paying.

Taxing your friends does not make you stronger against your rivals.

Whac-A-Mole

One authority after another

CNN calls it Whac-A-Mole. One law goes down, another pops out of its hole.

After IEEPA, Section 122. After Section 122, Section 301. After Section 301, perhaps…

Wolff says so himself: he worries that if the Liberty Justice Center wins again, the administration will find another authority to replace Section 301. The only answer, he says, is to fight back.

More than a dozen investigations

Greer’s office is already investigating more than a dozen countries for excess manufacturing capacity, CNN reports.

One law, then another, then another. The same reflex.

Each new authority promises to last. Each rests on a law written for something else.

And each one, if it falls, leaves refunds owed behind it. To importers.

The mole changes holes. The counter stays put.

What the court can say

If the court strikes them down

Two outcomes, on September 30 or later.

If the court strikes them down, the Section 301 duties would have to be refunded, like the IEEPA ones. To importers, again. And the next authority would almost certainly be ready.

If the court upholds them, a law designed to target one country would become a global tax with no ceiling, at the discretion of a single office.

If the court upholds them

And yet, either way, one thing does not move. The price paid at the counter does not come back through the law.

That is where the question changes hands. It leaves the court and lands with us.

With the buyer. With the small importer. With the taxpayer.

Congress could rein in this power. The buyer has no seat in the courtroom.

Who pays for the next one?

The judge will rule on the law. Not on the receipt.

Keep the receipt

An author, a court, a buyer

An author disowns his law. An administration recycles it. A court will rule. Seven refunded companies in ten keep at least part of the money in the bank.

In the middle, a buyer who paid, in whole or in part, a tax ruled illegal once, and perhaps a second time.

I am not asking anyone to love or hate tariffs. I am asking us to look at who pays, and who gets refunded.

Pay here, refund elsewhere

How many times will we agree to pay a tax at the counter so that it can be refunded somewhere else?

The answer is not in the courtroom. It is in what we tolerate.

And in the pocket, crumpled, the strip that fades.

Keep the receipt. It is all the law leaves you.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — Section 301 tariffs on 60 economies, July 23, 2026
• Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta — how firms use tariff refunds, September 21, 2026
• Liberty Justice Center — amicus briefs from Wolff, Hills and Maruyama, September 14, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CNN, via KRDO — the author of Section 301 calls the tariffs illegal, September 25, 2026
• CFO Dive — companies hold on to tariff refunds, September 24, 2026
• Los Angeles Times — the trade war and prices, September 25, 2026