Summer is often a time for lawyers to worry more about their family vacations than their next bankruptcy filing. But this year is an exception, with a July surge in filings driven by the new administration’s tariff and immigration policies and a normalization back to pre-pandemic levels overall, experts said.

For the first time since 2020, July saw an uptick in all commercial filings versus the previous month, according to data from Epiq AACER and the American Bankruptcy Institute.

Year-over-year fillings also spiked, with Chapter 11 cases rising 78% to 911 compared to July 2024, while commercial bankruptcies overall rose 26%. Small business filings under Subchapter V also increased in July by 30% from the year before, part of a 12% rise in total bankruptcy filings overall to 49,614, the data showed.