This story was originally published on The North Carolina Independent
“We’re just trying to balance all of it the best we can,’ said Erik Fabian, co-founder of the Asheville-based company Sourhouse
By: Alyssa Burr
For Sam Ratto’s Raleigh-based chocolate company, President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs plan was anything but sweet.
Ratto told the North Carolina Independent that his business, the Videri Chocolate Factory, has been affected “pretty gravely” over the last year by the financial strain the levies created: After trying to keep the prices of his candy low for as long as he could, he was forced to raise them to stay afloat. The company then had to lay off a long-time employee who had been with the company for almost 13 years, Ratto said, because of uncertainty over whether sales would hold steady or not.
With a February U.S. Supreme Court decision forcing the federal government to refund business owners who paid tariffs, Ratto said he’s still unsure whether his company will be made whole.
“We, directly and indirectly, paid almost $50,000 of tariffs in 2025 and then in 2026, and I hope we get some of that money back,” Ratto said. “And if we get some of that money back, or all of it back, we’ll be able to lower the cost of goods for our company and then start lowering the prices again for the chocolate that we had to raise the price on. But if I don’t get any of it back, it’s not abnormal, and it’s sort of a wash.”
The Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump on Feb. 20 that Trump did not have the authority he claimed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs and that therefore the tariffs he had imposed in 2025 were unconstitutional. Following the ruling, the U.S. Court of International Trade ordered the federal government to issue refunds: Roughly 330,000 importers had paid a combined $166 billion in tariffs under Trump’s emergency declaration as of March 4, Brandon Lord, executive director of trade programs in U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade, reported in a March 6 court filing.
Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency responsible for collecting tariffs, launched the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system to process electric refunds on April 20. According to the Customs and Border Protection website, the process is being rolled out in phases, with the first step limited to importers with shipments that haven’t been processed yet or were recently finalized. It’s unclear which shipments will be included in future phases and when the next phase could launch.
“These tariffs cost North Carolina families and businesses $3.5 billion,” said North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson in an April 24 statement. “That was money people needed for food, gas, and running their businesses. I hope eligible businesses act now to apply for refunds. The newly announced system is a good first step, but we need a faster process for refunds that doesn’t burden businesses.”
The same day the Supreme Court overturned the emergency tariffs, Trump imposed a new 10% global tariff, claiming authority under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 122 authorizes the president to impose tariffs up to 15%, for no more than 150 days, in order to “to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” or “to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets.”
Two dozen states, including North Carolina, filed a lawsuit on March 5 over the new set of tariffs, arguing Trump is once again acting beyond his authority.
The earlier set of tariffs “compounded an already rough situation” for the Videri Chocolate Factory, Ratto said. Before Trump’s return to the White House, Ratto said the prices of imported cacao beans, the key ingredient in chocolate, had already tripled starting in 2024, and the supply of beans, which the company sources primarily from countries in South and Central America, was hit hard by extreme weather events. Once Trump began imposing tariffs in 2025 and countries that import U.S. goods responded with their own reciprocal tariffs, the financial stress on his company increased.
Sourhouse is an Asheville-based company that sells tools for baking homemade sourdough breads such as glass jars for starters, bread blankets, baking dishes and scoring lames. The business’ co-founder, Erik Fabian, said the uncertainty surrounding tariffs has been a distraction from Sourhouse’s mission and caused delays in product development, while also causing it to delay hiring new staff or taking out business loans.
The Trump administration claimed in April 2025 that tariffs “are necessary to ensure fair trade, protect American workers, and reduce the trade deficit.” Fabian said he extensively searched for the same products he imports from China in the United States, but there weren’t any domestically made options.
“Unfortunately, with our products, we make majority of our things in China, and there is no other kind of industrial marketplace for that sort of kitchen product that we make, and so China is it,” Fabian said.
After raising prices for their products last year to keep up with the new financial challenges, Fabian said that they lowered their prices back down in February in order to give customers the best value they could. However, Trump’s war on Iran has created interruptions in the global oil market and caused gasoline prices to skyrocket, and Fabian said Sourhouse is now absorbing the added shipping costs in an effort to delay passing them onto customers: “We’re just trying to balance all of it the best we can. And I think, like everybody, we’re just trying to get through it day to day.”
Fabian and Ratto say navigating the new tariff refund portal has become another hurdle for businesses.
“To set these things up, honestly, there’s not that many steps you need to do, and they’re not super complicated, if you have any technological ability. But all the language around it is all very bureaucratic and complicated and not communicated well. So it took me months to navigate it,” Fabian said.
Fabian estimates Sourhouse is owed over $170,000 dollars in tariffs alone: “What we won’t get back is additional costs we’ve had to pay for additional warehousing fees, as well as the lost sales and delays that we’ve been facing in terms of bringing out new products and whatnot. So I still don’t know if we’re going to get any or all that. Obviously these things change, it seems like weekly.”
Ratto said his company is working with brokers to see how long it will take to get their refunds. The Customs and Border Protection website states that, in the first phase of repayments, importers should anticipate receiving electronic payments within 60-90 days following acceptance of their refund application, unless it requires further review.
“I knew that it was going to be hard to find and hard to access, so I am just going to keep on trying to figure out how to get refunds for tariffs that I paid,” Ratto said. “They’re going to make it hard. They’re not going to make it easy for people to get their money back.”
The North Carolina Independent is a project of American Independent Media, a 501(c)(4) organization whose mission is to use journalism to educate the public, giving them the information they need about local and federal issues. Read more at The North Carolina Independent.
