Chuck Santarelli

When Matt Dorman spent 3,240,000 guineas on eight yearling fillies at last year's Tattersalls October Book 1, he pretty much accepted that he'd never again see the 10-15% tariffs he paid on the horses again. The tariffs, a result of Donald Trump's invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to implement taxes on goods being imported from foreign countries in 2025, included a 10-percent rate. The figure was levied on goods coming from the U.K., while 15 percent was assessed on other European Union countries. That meant that...

Back in February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Donald Trump's suite of International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs were unconstitutional. That decision opened the door to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds to businesses that had paid those tariffs since they went into effect a year prior, including those who shipped in Thoroughbreds from abroad. "We just did it unilaterally, figuring our customers would want their money back," said Charles "Chuck" Santarelli, president of Mersant International, licensed custom brokers and freight forwarders which ships...