Burlap & Barrel is suing President Donald Trump over what the founders call unpredictable, industry‑threatening tariffs that have upended their global sourcing system.
Burlap & Barrel, a US-based single‑origin spice importer, filed a brief last week challenging the legality of the recently imposed tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Their lawsuit comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling against Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs, which the Court deemed unconstitutional.
The new 10% tariffs on all countries immediately sounded alarms for small- to medium-sized import-driven businesses. President Trump described these tariffs as measures to “protect US interests,” outlined in a White House fact sheet.
Some exemptions include food products that cannot be domestically produced, like tomatoes, beef and oranges.
However, Burlap & Barrel did not believe it could wait for larger companies to act. Non-profit law firm Liberty Justice Center is representing the company, alongside a US-based toy importer for the lawsuit.
“We’ve never sued anybody ever, let alone the President of the United States,” said Burlap & Barrel’s Co‑Founder Ethan Frisch.
Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to impose temporary tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days to address balance-of-payment deficits. Burlap & Barrel argues that the administration’s enforcement of the tariffs does not reflect the original intent of the statute, and its deployment was without warning or explanation.
For a company that plans its sourcing cycles 12 to 18 months in advance, the uncertainty around the tariff’s impact on its business is destabilizing, Frisch said.
“We pay big deposits months and months … sometimes a year in advance of when we’re going to receive the product,” he said. “We’ve just been operating in the opposite of that environment for the past year, not knowing … how much a product is going to cost by the time it gets to the US."
The instability extends to the farm level, where farmers are planning on agricultural cycles not quarterly earnings to ensure their stability, added Co-founder, Ori Zohar.
The divide, Zohar said, is widening: “There’s a disconnect between the agricultural cycles … and the kind of American foreign policy that keeps changing and going back and forth.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit in time for press.
The disproportionate burden on small businesses
As a small business, Burlap & Barrel lacks the barriers that allow larger food companies to weather abrupt policy changes.
“Small businesses are really bearing the cost of this. We don’t have giant trade deals. We don’t have giant legal teams … We don’t have dozens of redundant supply chains,” Zohar emphasized.
The cost burden is direct and unavoidable. “Shipments [are] leaving the country under one tariff policy and landing in the US under another,” he said.
There’s a disconnect between the agricultural cycles… and the kind of American foreign policy that keeps changing and going back and forth
Ori Zohar, co-founder, Burlap & Barrel
The company imports from 30 countries and has spent upwards of $200,000 in tariffs in the last year. That money is typically spent on farmer deposits and future harvests.
“We find ourselves today in a cash crunch as a business,” Frisch said, noting that the company now faces “really tough decisions about purchasing … because we don’t have the cash to pay for it. It’s all been spent on tariffs already.”
The company adhered two commitments: not raising prices and not pushing costs onto partner farmers.
Because many of Burlap & Barrel’s 170 spices have no domestic equivalent – from herbs de Provence to purple‑stripe garlic and Vietnamese cinnamon – the tariffs impacted the majority of their SKUs.
A single shipment illustrates the impact on the business. For example, one herbs de Provence container that arrived March 3 carried “$7,421 of tariffs” on top of a “total cost of just under $50,000,” Frisch explained.
Why sue now – and why Burlap & Barrel?
Burlap & Barrel felt compelled to step forward in the absence of industry leadership.
“It’s really disappointing … looking for big companies to push back … and basically nobody stand up,” Frisch said. “Somebody had to do it.”
Even after the victory of the IEEPA case, many larger companies “continued to stay on the sidelines,” he added.
Large corporations have the advantage of absorbing “a lot of the costs” and have lobbyists “working on getting carve outs,” explained Sara Albrecht, chairwoman, Liberty Justice Center.
“Shareholders don’t like people suing the President of the United States,” she added.
Ultimately, the lawsuit is about structural fairness on behalf of small businesses, and not financial compensation, Frisch said.
“We don’t have an upside out of this. … This is purely to influence policy. … We’re doing this on behalf of small businesses across America,” Zohar added.
What comes next
The Court of International Trade has moved quickly since Burlap & Barrel filed the complaint on March 9 with the motion for summary judgment on March 13, Albrecht said. The court date is set for April 10 and Albrecht predicts a “swift resolution.”
Win or lose, the founders reflect on the the stakes extending beyond their own company. “We’re a tiny, tiny company,” Frisch said. “We have no outside investors. … We’ve built it organically every year.”
But, he added, “We’re prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if that’s where it goes.”
