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The federal government is being forced to return more than $165 billion in collected

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tariffs to domestic importers, and the online portal to request those refunds went live

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this week. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump's tariffs, resulting in the

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order to refund the import taxes. Wisconsin businesses are looking to get some relief,

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including Verroqua-based Wonder State Coffee with its three locations across the state.

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CEO T.J. Sumanche joins us now from Verroqua, and thanks a lot for being here.

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It's good to be here. Thank you. So first question, how much did tariffs cost you?

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Yeah, we paid almost $140,000 in tariffs last year. That's a big number for any business,

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but in this tariff discussion, is coffee unusual because it's almost all imported?

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Yeah, we've been saying this from the get-go that we really didn't understand the purpose or the

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intent of taxing and terrapping a product that we can't even promote domestic production of.

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All coffee is grown in the tropics. There's a tiny bit grown in Puerto Rico and Hawaii,

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but not close to being able to meet the U.S. demand. So we were paying attacks that we didn't

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understand what the impact was for. So describe from me where you source your coffee from. What

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country? Yeah, we source a lot of coffee from Latin America, from places that people think about

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when coffee like Colombia, but also Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and then also in Africa.

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We bring in a lot of coffee from Ethiopia, which is the birthplace of coffee, and also

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smaller countries like Rwanda and Burundi, Kenya. Did you ever reach out to your U.S. representatives

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or others, trade officials about the fact that coffee is almost 100% imported?

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I did, for sure. Yeah, I reached out to all of our elected officials, Derek Van Orden here in

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our Congressional Third District. And I even went to D.C. last year and got a chance to speak to

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some senators and share our frustration and trying to just lend our voice as a small business,

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but also a small business that is importing what is an international product.

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What have the cost of the tariffs meant for your business? Yeah, last year it was really

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challenging. It was unexpected. In my 25 years into coffee, we've never even once considered a

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tariff on our coffee that we import. So it was a curveball and already in a challenging business

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climate where other costs are going up, like health care, shipping costs, things like that,

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that this was just one more headache and again, not being expected at all. We had to deal with

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these costs. One of the things that people don't quite realize is we had to pay for the tariff

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before we even got the product in the country. So this is before we could even sell it. We had

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to borrow money to pay the tariff. So we were then paying interest costs on the money we borrowed

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for the tariffs. So all these things were compounding and just making it harder and harder for us.

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Have you gone online to request a refund? And if so, how is that process going?

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Yeah, we technically are not the importer of record. So we work with brokers who do a lot of

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the logistics for us. So their names are the ones that are on record for being the importer.

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So we're working with them and they, as one of their clients, and they are

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they're applying for those refunds. And we haven't gotten any word of what the progress is or you

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know, there's a lot of uncertainty on how this process is going to unfold.

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To those tariffs as significant as they were for a small business get passed along then

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to your customers? Yeah, in some way or fashion they did. We had again, last year was challenging

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a lot of ways. Coffee itself, the cost, the commodity price of coffee skyrocketed last year.

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So we were paying a tariff on what was already a historical cost for coffee. So all these things

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were compounding and we did have a price increase last year that we passed on to our customers.

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And and tariffs were a part of that. So the, you know, how much of that was the tariff?

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It's a little confusing and, you know, just because there was a lot of factors.

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Well, what has business planning been like over the course of these changeable tariffs?

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I mean, the change that just the recent change in tariffs or just the changing back and forth.

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The changing back and forth and through the course of it and the uncertainty and how to

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how to plan for, you know, future business? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we had to reforcast our profit

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and our budget last year. We even pulled back on some investments in growth. We decided not to

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buy a piece of equipment last year just because of the business climate. This would have been

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expanding our production capabilities. And we, you know, this was a piece of equipment that

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the one that we're looking at was mostly built in Wisconsin. So we did not, you know, invest and

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we did not make that purchase. So you could see even where the ripple effects might be. But we

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did pull back on our kind of expectations for growth and profit and even hiring and being able

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to invest in our staff. That, you know, coming into 2026 with the change in tariffs and it feels like,

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you know, we are a little more optimistic kind of going, we're going back a whole year where we kind

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of came into 2025. We're kind of coming back into 2026 with that perspective. But I would say that

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it felt like a whole year of just kind of a holding pattern. How optimistic are you that you will

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get the tariffs that you paid refunded? I'm a pretty optimistic person. So I put our chances

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that better than 50%. But again, I'll believe it when the money is in our bank because again,

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this has been such a uncertain process from the beginning. We're hoping that the administration

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doesn't fight as the, you know, as this portal is open and money actually starts flowing that they

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don't cut off those funds. But we don't, you know, we don't know. We're not counting on it until we

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actually have the money in our bank. Which might be months or a year from now. We don't know.

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Not banking now. All right. TJ, some action. Thanks very much.

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All right. Thank you.

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Thank you, sir. All right. You're welcome. Now back to coffee roasting and

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tasting and veg and selling back to it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. You have a good day. Take care.