Watch Retailer Suing Trump Administration Over Tariffs

By Rob Bates | July 31, 2026

A watch retailer has made national news by suing the federal government to stop the latest round of Trump administration tariffs, imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

Asher Rapkin (pictured), cofounder and CEO of Collective Horology, a Ventura, Calif., store that specializes in independent timepieces, tells JCK that his 8-year-old business has never been involved in a lawsuit before. And he doesn’t sound all that excited about it.

“I’m a watch retailer,” he says. “What I want to do every day is sell watches. I do not want to be discussing the finer points of import law. And I certainly do not want to be suing the federal government. This is not in my business plan or on my proverbial bingo card.”

He only became involved in the case because he was friends with Ori Zohar, one of the owners of Burlap & Barrel, the spice company that successfully sued the administration in the Court of International Trade over the global 10% tariffs imposed in February. (While the court ruled those tariffs illegal, it declined to enjoin them, barring a ruling from a higher court. Those tariffs have since expired.) That case was handled by the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian public interest law firm that has been involved in all the challenges to the Trump duties.

Rapkin says he reached out to Zohar to express his appreciation for taking on the government. “And we got to talking, and as these new tariffs came up, he connected me with the Liberty Justice Center, and it came together pretty quickly,” he says.

He admits the case has taken some time away from his store, but says that the tariffs have caused too much damage for him not to take action.

“They’ve made it more difficult to be a business in America and more expensive to be a consumer and watch collector in America, and they’ve done it with incredibly erratic choices,” he says. “We’ve seen the tariffs on Swiss goods start at 30%, go up to 39%, down to 10%, and now they’re at 12.5%. And that just makes things not only more expensive and more challenging for business but also incredibly difficult to plan.”

Rapkin’s complaint, which was filed July 24 in the Court of International Trade, notes that the independent watches sold by Collective are manufactured all over the globe, including Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

“Collective currently has three shipments scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks on which it will be required to pay duties imposed by the Section 301 action,” it adds. “These imports are valued at approximately $69,000. The expected tariff on those imports is approximately $8,280.”

Rapkin says he stocks some American-made watches, but even they have had to raise prices because most of those companies use imported parts. In addition, the industry here is far too small.

“There just isn’t enough of a market or a production capacity for us to be able to adequately stock, sell, and survive just selling American watches at this point,” he says. “Look, I love that American watches are coming back, but these tariffs do nothing to help that.”

Some legal experts say the case against the 301 tariffs is not as strong as it was against the tariffs enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which the Supreme Court struck down in February, in part because that law didn’t even mention tariffs.

Rapkin says he doesn’t know if his challenge will be successful.

“I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t have any kind of crystal ball,” he says. “I’ll let the lawyers make the arguments.”

Still, he’s proved an energetic advocate for his cause. During a CNN interview, anchor Paula Newton asked him why he’s fighting tariffs that “aren’t that high.”

He responded that “saying 12.5% is not that high is a little bit of Stockholm syndrome. If we roll back the clock to April 2025, there was no 12.5% tariffs.… Americans are paying these taxes. And it’s a pretty meaningful and hefty expense.”

(Photo courtesy of Collective Horology)