Terry Precision Cycling Got Most of Its Tariff Money Back. Now It's Asking a Court to Unlock $11 Billion for Everyone Else
It cut $50 off a product hit by 145% tariffs as soon as the refund landed. Now the Burlington company is asking a court to do it for everyone.
ANALYSIS — Terry Precision Cycling has recovered most of what it paid under the tariffs the Supreme Court threw out in February, and it has already cut about $50 off the price of a product that got caught at the peak of the trade war.
The Burlington company is not finished. On Aug. 6, a federal judge heard argument on Terry’s motion to certify a class covering importers whose entries have passed a customs deadline — a category the company’s lawyers put at roughly $11 billion in duties nationwide. A ruling could come this month.
And some of Terry’s own money is sitting at FedEx.
The company
Terry Precision Cycling makes cycling apparel and saddles for women. It has a 16-person team, a Burlington headquarters, and nearly four decades of history as the first brand built exclusively around women’s riding. Nik Holm took over as president in 2024.
In April 2025 Terry became one of five small businesses that sued to block President Trump’s emergency tariffs, in a case brought by the Liberty Justice Center. The others were V.O.S. Selections, a New York wine importer; FishUSA, a Pennsylvania fishing-tackle company; Genova Pipe, a Utah plumbing-supply manufacturer; and MicroKits, a Virginia maker of educational electronics. Vermont was also one of twelve states that sued in a companion case heard alongside it.
The five businesses won at every level. On Feb. 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize a president to impose tariffs.
Terry’s exposure was the reason it joined. The company was already paying duties of up to 39.5 percent on some goods before the new tariffs arrived. When the emergency tariffs stacked on top, the bill on some imports reached 145 percent.
Compass has covered Terry’s tariff exposure since last winter, and covered the opening of the federal refund process this spring, when the question became what businesses would do with money their customers had already paid.
Six months later, there is an answer.
What came back
Holm told Compass this week that Terry has received the majority of its Phase 1 refunds on entries where Terry itself was the importer of record — the party legally responsible to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for a shipment and the duties owed on it. Phase 1 is the first tier of the federal refund process, limited to entries CBP has not yet finalized, plus those finalized within the last 80 days.
Holm filed the claims himself through CBP’s electronic system. No customs broker, no lawyer.
His earlier estimate held up. The 2025 figure of roughly $200,000 was close, he said, and 2026 was tracking toward about double that before the tariffs were stopped. For a 16-person company, the 2025 bill alone came to about $12,500 per employee.
Interest came with the refunds. Holm described it as smaller than expected but welcome.
The customer-facing part moved fast. When the duty bill on one Terry product hit 145 percent, the company raised its price. When the refund arrived, Terry put that product back to its original cost — roughly $50 cheaper.
Other products were harder. Some carried a smaller emergency-tariff rate but were also subject to the separate duties Terry had been paying all along, which stayed in place when the emergency tariffs fell. The price never moved cleanly in either direction.
Holm was also direct about what the refund is not. The money, he said, is going back to cash Terry already spent and absorbed. On thin operating income, it covers things that got deferred: inventory, product development, and staff.
The $11 billion question
Some of Terry’s money is still being withheld because those entries are more than 80 days past liquidation — the point at which CBP makes its final calculation of what was owed on a shipment. Under the process CBP built, entries past that mark fall outside Phase 1.
Terry is not just waiting on that question. It filed the motion to answer it.
Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton scheduled oral argument on Terry’s class-certification motion for Aug. 6. Certification would require CBP to make the same refund path available to every eligible importer regardless of liquidation status — including the thousands of businesses that never filed a lawsuit of their own. The Liberty Justice Center puts the duties in that category at roughly $11 billion.
In a note to plaintiffs, Liberty Justice Center chief executive Sara Albrecht wrote that she felt good about the court’s response to the argument and hoped for a decision by the end of August.
A separate government appeal on the liquidation and refund question is pending before the Federal Circuit.
The money at FedEx
On other Terry shipments, FedEx was the importer of record, not Terry. Holm said FedEx has the refund money for those entries and has not remitted it to Terry.
That matters past one company. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that FedEx has recognized about $800 million in tariff refunds and said it would begin disbursing that money to shippers and consumers in August, describing itself as a pass-through required to collect duties and taxes on customers’ behalf and pointing customers to a status tracker on its website.
As of Aug. 14, one Vermont shipper is still waiting.
Compass asked FedEx about the timeline for those disbursements and how the tracker reflects claims still in process. The company had not responded as of publication.
The scale
The Supreme Court ruling put roughly $166 billion in collected tariffs in play — about $490 for every person in the country.
CBP told a federal court it had received just over 252,000 refund applications as of July 31 and accepted $128.7 billion for processing, about 77 percent of the total. Roughly $100 billion had gone to Treasury for disbursement — about 60 cents of every dollar collected.
The Journal counted more than 40 S&P 500 companies reporting some $9.6 billion in refunds, including at least $2.1 billion already in hand. Apple’s reported refund alone is close to $2.2 billion. Nike reported $986 million, FedEx about $800 million, Amazon $640 million, General Motors $500 million.
Set against $166 billion, everything the S&P 500 has publicly reported so far is less than 6 percent of the money.
Who gives it back
The refund goes to the importer of record. That is the entire rule, and it is why most Vermonters who paid more at a register in 2025 will never see a dollar of it. A business that bought imported goods from a distributor was not the importer of record and has no claim to file. Neither does a customer.
What happens after the money lands is a choice each company makes. The public record so far:
Terry Precision Cycling cut the price on the product that took the 145 percent hit back to its pre-tariff cost, roughly $50, as soon as the refund arrived.
FedEx says it will pass its $800 million through to shippers and consumers starting this month, and points customers to an online tracker.
IDEX, which sells pumps and valves, expects to rebate $14.7 million of the more than $20 million it received — about two-thirds.
Costco has said it plans to pass refunds to customers in some form, at levels similar to what it passed on in costs, and has cautioned that the federal process could take months.
Amazon says it can trace tariff costs to specific customers only in a narrow set of cases and will contact those customers. Otherwise, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told investors in July, “we’ll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers.”
Dozens of consumer class actions are now pending over that gap, including suits naming Costco, FedEx and IKEA.
The smallest company on that list moved first and moved furthest, on an operating margin that leaves no room for error.
What to watch
Judge Eaton’s ruling on Terry’s class-certification motion is the one that decides whether the roughly $11 billion in finally liquidated entries gets paid — and with it, the last of Terry’s money and that of every Vermont importer that never sued. Albrecht has told plaintiffs she expects it by the end of the month.
Compass Vermont is an independent, reader-supported Vermont news outlet.