A watch retailer takes the tariffs to court

§1From the invoice to the court.

The watch trade has taken its tariff fight from the invoice to the courtroom. Collective Horology, a California independent that sells and makes watches, filed suit at the US Court of International Trade challenging the Section 301 duties layered onto imports this year, joined by the spice importer Burlap & Barrel and backed by the Liberty Justice Center. It is the first time a watch retailer has tried to overturn the tariff regime rather than simply pay it.

The legal argument is procedural, and pointed. The complaint says the US Trade Representative applied a near-uniform tariff across dozens of countries without the country-by-country investigation the Trade Act of 1974 requires. USTR applied a uniform tariff to nearly every country, co-founder Asher Rapkin said, arguing the government skipped the work the statute demands. The relief sought is a block on enforcement and the preservation of importers' right to claw duties back if the measures are struck down.

§2A procedural argument.

The dollars behind the principle are real. Collective says Swiss watch imports have run at least 12.5 percent more expensive since April 2025, and that it is owed more than $164,000 in refunds from the earlier IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court has already vacated — money still not returned — on top of what it has paid under Section 122 and now Section 301. For a small importer, that is not an accounting footnote; it is working capital.

§3Nowhere to reroute.

The case lands into a trade already doing the tariff arithmetic daily. New duties of 10 and 12.5 percent took effect on jewelry, stones and metals from some sixty countries on July 24, stacking onto country measures that reach 50 percent on Canada. Swiss watches, sourced from a single high-cost country, have nowhere to reroute — which is precisely why a Swiss-heavy retailer is the one testing the policy in court.