The Supreme Court ruled that a big chunk of Trump's tariffs were illegal, and the federal government is sitting on more than $160 billion in refunds it owes back to American businesses. Marc Bowker, who owns a comic book store in Lima, Ohio, paid over $16,000 of that. He is not getting it back.
Wolverine Figurines, 145% Tariffs, and a Very Bad Year
Alter Ego Comics is not a complicated business. Marc Bowker sells comic books and action figures in Lima, Ohio. Detailed, foot-tall statues of Wolverine and Spider-Man, manufactured in China, drive about 70% of his revenue. When Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs and slapped a 145% tax on Chinese imports, that revenue stream got absolutely torched.
According to NPR, Bowker paid his supplier more than $16,000 in tariffs since Liberation Day. For a while he tried passing some of that on to customers as a 3% fee tacked onto purchases. Then his action figure sales dropped 50%. He got rid of the fee and started absorbing the cost himself. "The reality is our action figure business was down 50% last year," Bowker told NPR. "And I have a feeling a lot of that had to do with tariffs."
That is not a hunch. That is a man watching his business get squeezed from both ends, by the cost of getting product in and the customers who can no longer afford to buy it once it's there.
The Court Said It Was Illegal. The Refund Exists. He Gets None of It.
Here is where it gets truly maddening. In February, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose many of these tariffs was illegal. The government is now processing more than $160 billion in refunds. That money is real. The debt is acknowledged. The checks are theoretically being cut.
Bowker's problem is structural, and it is brutal. He didn't pay U.S. Customs and Border Protection directly. His distributor, Sideshow Collectibles, did. So Sideshow is the entity eligible for the refund, not Bowker. Sideshow could pass some of that money down to him, just as it passed the cost down in the first place, but so far it has told Bowker it hasn't received anything. NPR reached out to Sideshow for comment. The company did not respond.
"I'm not expecting anything," Bowker told NPR. "I don't want to keep bugging this company. It's a company that we've had a good relationship with for over 20 years." Read that again. He paid $16,000 in taxes a federal court later declared illegal, and his response is that he doesn't want to be a nuisance about it.
Canada Is the Next Shoe Waiting to Drop
If the action figure situation wasn't enough, Bowker is now watching a second threat roll in from the north. Comics, the actual comic books on his shelves, are primarily imported from Canada. They are not currently caught in the escalating U.S.-Canada trade war. The key word being currently.
NPR reports that the trade conflict between the two countries keeps intensifying, and if tariffs expand to cover Canadian printed goods, Bowker's other revenue stream gets hit too. "It unfortunately could be a major issue to an industry that has really been firing on almost all cylinders for the last couple of years," he said. There's a genuine comic book renaissance happening right now, driven by titles like Absolute Batman. Business is actually up this year despite everything. That success exists in spite of the tariff environment, not because of anything the government did to help.
The Customers Are Feeling It Too
While Bowker absorbed the tariff cost rather than pass it fully along, his customers aren't insulated from the broader inflation that tariffs have helped drive. NPR reports that some customers are tightening their budgets because of rising prices across the board.
"Everything I sell is not necessary, you know? But it is an escape," Bowker told NPR. "But at the end of the day they have to have money in their bank account in order to pay for this stuff." Comic books are a discretionary purchase. They are also, for a lot of people, a lifeline, a few dollars of escapism in a world that keeps delivering more things to escape from. When people have less money, the escape hatch gets smaller.
The Dingo Take
A federal court looked at what Trump did with IEEPA and said: no, this was illegal, give the money back. The government agreed to give the money back. The money is being given back, technically, to the importers who paid it directly. And then those importers are under zero legal obligation to pass any of it down to the small businesses they squeezed to collect it in the first place. Marc Bowker paid $16,000 in taxes the Supreme Court called illegal and his only realistic option is to hope Sideshow Collectibles feels generous. That is the refund mechanism. That is the whole system.
This is not an accident. It is the predictable result of designing tariff policy with no downstream accountability. The big importers absorb the refund. The small businesses absorb the loss. The administration gets to point to $160 billion in refunds being processed as evidence that the courts have been satisfied, while Marc Bowker in Lima, Ohio eats a $16,000 hit and politely declines to pester a distributor he's worked with for two decades.
Trump and his team spent eighteen months telling small business owners that the pain was worth it, that they were soldiers in a great economic war, that the tariffs would ultimately protect American industry. Bowker's action figure sales fell 50%. His customers are tightening their budgets. Comics from Canada might be next. And the $160 billion bailout that the courts forced? That money is not coming to main street. It never was.
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