Starting a Sichuan pepper business, we expected to learn a lot about food. We didn’t expect to learn an entirely new vocabulary of trade: demurrage, landed costs, FOB, HS codes, twenty-foot equivalents, ISF, IEEPA — a growing collection of strange words and abbreviations that somehow became part of our everyday vocabulary!
Then one abbreviation became particularly important: IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law giving the president broad economic powers during a declared national emergency.
A Very Short Tariff Legal Drama
In February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs, opening the door for importers like us to recover IEEPA tariffs we had already paid.
The tariff story wasn’t quite over. The administration then turned to Section 122 for a new temporary tariff. That was successfully challenged in the U.S. Court of International Trade and, in any event, reached the end of its 150-day run in July.
And Then the Treasury Paid Us
After all those acronyms, tariff changes, and court cases, something wonderfully simple happened: money came back.
Seeing a payment from the U.S. Treasury land in our bank account was a pretty surreal small-business moment.
After the year we’d had, IEEPA suddenly had a much cheerier ring to it: IEEPA? YIPPEE!
When Geopolitics Shows Up on the Invoice
We started 50Hertz to share the extraordinary flavor and tingle of Sichuan pepper. We certainly didn’t expect geopolitics to become such a regular part of running a food business.
But when you import from China, headlines can quickly become actual line items on your customs bill. Like thousands of small businesses, we got swept up in the tariff war.
Who Actually Pays a Tariff?
One of the strange things about tariffs is that, although they’re collected at the border, their costs don’t necessarily stay there. Importers absorb some, businesses adjust margins and promotions, and some costs eventually make their way into prices.
Yale’s Budget Lab estimated that 61–80% of the new tariffs were showing up in consumer core-goods prices by June 2025.
At 50Hertz, we absorbed what we reasonably could and tried to keep the impact on our customers as limited as possible.
But when we received tariff refunds, that gave us an idea.
You Can’t Un-Bake a Tariff Cake
Image: One of the many tariff bills that became part of our cost of doing business.
So what happens when an old business expense suddenly comes back?
Think of our costs as cake batter: product, freight, warehousing, promotions, margins — and then someone walks into the kitchen and adds a tariff. The cake gets baked. Some slices sell at full price, some on promotion, some wholesale.
Months later, someone comes back and says, “Good news! We’re giving you the tariff back.”
Great. Now please remove it from the cake.
There’s no sensible way to trace those costs backward to every jar, bag, or customer. The tariffs we paid were business expenses incurred by 50Hertz, not separate charges collected from or assigned to individual customers or purchases.
So the refund gave us an idea: celebrate the good news with our community in a more 50Hertz way.
This isn’t a refund, reimbursement, or credit tied to any past purchase — just a voluntary promotion celebrating some good news with the people who supported us through it.
Enter the 50Hertz Tariff Wheel
To celebrate the tariff relief, we created some appropriately tariff-themed discounts for our community!
If you’re a 50Hertz newsletter subscriber, keep an eye on your inbox for your chance to spin the Tariff Wheel.
Whatever you land on becomes the discount on your next order.
And these aren’t random numbers. They’re stops on the tariff roller coaster — based on real rates we faced on imports from China:
10% OFF · 20% OFF · 30% OFF · 54% OFF
Image: The U.S.–China tariff roller coaster: 10% → 145% → 30% → IEEPA tariffs struck down in Feb. 2026 → ???. Source: The New York Times (2025).
Once, we dreaded seeing those numbers added to our costs.
Now you get to subtract them from your order.
And yes, we did the math on the wheel — the bigger discounts are a little harder to land. We want to share some good news, not create another financial emergency.
A Long Journey for a Little Pepper
Tariffs are only one part of importing. Our products cross oceans, clear customs, move through ports, and pass through some of the world’s great trade chokepoints.
Years ago, I happened to visit the Panama Canal and photographed the ships passing through its locks. A few years later, our own Tingly Peanuts were traveling that same route to New York.
The journey isn’t always so photogenic. Customs delays, freight costs, and disruptions are all part of getting Sichuan pepper from Sichuan to your kitchen.
We can’t predict the next twist in global trade. We’ll just keep doing our best to keep prices stable and the tingles moving.
Where the Tariff Roller Coaster Goes Next
Through all the tariff twists and turns, you kept supporting 50Hertz. Thank you.
This isn’t a dollar-for-dollar tariff reimbursement or a promise about future refunds — just our way of sharing a little of the good news with you.
We can’t predict where the tariff roller coaster goes next. For now, we’re just happy to have a little relief — and a reason to celebrate with the people who came along for the ride.
The tariff cake is already baked. We might as well have some fun eating it.
IEEPA? YIPPEE.
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