Rivian filed a lawsuit on Thursday in the U.S. Court of International Trade seeking a full refund of the tariffs it paid under the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” duties, which the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional. The complaint names the U.S. government, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and CBP commissioner Rodney Scott as defendants. CBP collected the tariffs on behalf of the administration, which had justified them under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The filing argues that the Supreme Court decision on its own does not guarantee anything. Rivian’s lawyers wrote that importers who paid IEEPA tariffs are not assured of getting that money back based on the ruling alone, which is the reason the company says a separate action is necessary. Rivian is asking the court to declare the tariffs “contrary to law,” to order a refund with interest, and to cover associated court fees.
Rivian joins a long list of global companies that have gone to the same court over the same tariffs in recent months.
CFO Claire McDonough said in April that she expected Rivian to recover somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars.
The refund process itself has been slow. In a statement to TechCrunch, CBP said that more than $121 billion in potential and certified refunds have been accepted for processing. The agency did not comment on Rivian’s lawsuit. Earlier this month the Cato Institute put the amount actually paid out at roughly $71 billion, and wrote that the gap suggests friction built into the process is creating obstacles for importers trying to collect.
The tariffs did reach Rivian’s cost structure while they were in effect. RJ Scaringe told Reuters last year that he expected each vehicle to cost a couple of thousand dollars more as a result. By the end of 2025 he said the company had brought that impact down to the low hundreds of dollars per vehicle.
In a regulatory filing earlier this year, Rivian wrote that the resulting environment of retaliatory trade practices and additional restrictions or barriers has harmed, and could continue to harm, its ability to obtain raw materials, components, and equipment, as well as its ability to sell products and services at prices customers are willing to pay.
The timing lands in the middle of the R2 ramp. Rivian expects to deliver somewhere in the range of 20,000 to 25,000 R2s by the end of this year, and the company has pointed to that volume as the path to profitability. That target has moved. Rivian is now looking at 2028 rather than 2027 as it directs more spending toward autonomous vehicle development. The company recently raised about $1.3 billion through a share sale to build out its cash position in the meantime.
Rivian did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
