Last week the Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose global tariffs. For a hot minute, the ruling not only appeared to instantly mint thousands of US importers as creditors unlocking billions in potential refunds, it also fired the starting gun on a whopping investigative hunt.

While the jostling continues on the political stage, the real scarcity for buyers of distressed assets, hedge funds, and litigation funders is no longer just legal theory, but information. The government knows who paid. The importers know what they paid. But the market does not know who holds those rights today, nor who is desperate enough to sell them. That asymmetry is where the value now sits.

Calculating a claim requires sifting through millions of lines of shipping data, cross-referencing Bills of Lading with Harmonised Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes to reconstruct exactly who imported what, and at what volume. It’s an investigative exercise far removed from standard financial screening, leaving flush buyers of refunds with a menagerie of obscured targets.

The entity listed on a customs entry even 12-months ago may not be the entity holding the claim today. Mergers, acquisitions, corporate restructuring, and logistics intermediation have created a universe of ghost claimants. The right to a future refund could now sit with a holding company, a defunct subsidiary, or a completely different corporate entity. Finding the beneficiary holding the rights today means reconstructing these corporate histories.

The other battle is understanding the motivation of the creditor to sell. Solvent companies can afford to wait, but for some sellers – especially given the immediate reimposition of tariffs last weekend – selling a discounted claim now is crucial for their very survival. Making the most of this “refund opportunity” requires overlaying customs data and HTS codes with intelligence on the financial distress of those creditors with an appetite to sell claims at a discount.

This is no longer a passive bet on what will happen next in Trump’s tango with tariffs, but an investigative exercise to understand who is being ‘hit’ the most and where it hurts. The winners will not necessarily be the refund buyer with the most cash, but those who find the invisible sellers before the rest of the market catches up.

The following Raedas team members have prepared this update: Matthew Walker

Matthew Walker – Managing Director, Dubai (mwalker@raedas.com)