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IEEPA tariff refunds: where things stand, and the dates small and medium importers should not miss

Updated October 19, 2026. Facts current as of that date.

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” The same day, Executive Order 14389 ended all of the IEEPA tariff actions, including the drug-trafficking tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, the “reciprocal” tariffs, and the IEEPA tariffs on Brazil and India.

Getting the money back has been a separate, slower process, and for small and medium importers it has been the harder part.

How big the refund is

When the Court of International Trade (CIT) first ordered CBP, on March 4, 2026, to liquidate or reliquidate affected entries without IEEPA duties, CBP estimated that $166 billion in IEEPA duties had been assessed on 53 million entries, involving roughly 330,000 importers of record. The court noted that interest was accruing at about $650 million a month.

Since then, CBP’s refund tool has moved a large share of that money. In a sworn declaration filed October 6, 2026 in Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States, CBP said that as of October 2 about $136.6 billion in potential and certified refunds had been accepted for processing. About $126 billion of that, in duties plus interest, had been certified and sent to the Treasury for disbursement. Another 20,362 refunds, worth about $1.1 billion, had not been sent because the importer of record, or its CBP Form 4811 designee, had not provided ACH bank details.

But the CIT wrote on October 8 that “were CAPE to cease to function today approximately $30 billion in unlawfully collected duties would remain on deposit in the Treasury.”

How the process works: CAPE

CBP built a new function in its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) called CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries). CAPE lets an importer or broker submit a list of entries, as a CSV file, through the ACE Portal. CBP then recalculates duties without the IEEPA tariffs and refunds the difference with interest.

Key rules, from CBP’s IEEPA refunds page:

  • Who can file. Only the importer of record or “the licensed customs broker who filed the entries” can file a CAPE declaration. CBP says an attorney cannot file on an importer’s behalf.
  • ACE Portal account required. “To get a refund, bank account information must be provided using an ACE Portal account.” Adding bank details requires the “Importer” sub-account. Refunds go to the importer of record or to a party it has designated on CBP Form 4811.
  • Refunds go by ACH only. Since February 6, 2026, CBP issues refunds electronically, with limited exceptions. If refund bank details are not on file, the refund is held. Since October 10, 2026, adding or changing ACH details requires a security token sent by email, with text message as an option (CSMS # 70162211).
  • No amendments. Once a CAPE declaration is accepted, it cannot be amended or canceled. Entries found later go on a new declaration.
  • Correct other errors first. CBP says that once an entry is on a CAPE declaration, post-summary corrections and protests cannot be filed for it until it liquidates. Corrections unrelated to IEEPA duties should be filed before the CAPE declaration.
  • Timing. CBP says valid refunds will “generally be issued within 60–90 days following acceptance of the CAPE Declaration, unless a compliance concern requires further CBP review.”
  • Interest. Refunds include interest under 19 U.S.C. § 1505, generally from the date of deposit to liquidation or reliquidation, at the IRS rate for each quarter. For the quarter that began October 1, 2026, the overpayment rate is 6 percent for corporations and 7 percent for non-corporations.
  • No fees. CBP “does not charge any fees for processing tariff refunds.” A request for a fee or financial information from someone claiming to be CBP “is a scam.”

Who is covered, phase by phase

CBP has opened CAPE in phases:

  • Phase 1 (from April 20, 2026): certain unliquidated entries and entries liquidated within the preceding 80 days. CBP says the 80-day limit gives it time to reliquidate by day 90, the end of its voluntary reliquidation window under 19 U.S.C. § 1501.
  • Phase 2 (from June 29, 2026): entries flagged for reconciliation where no reconciliation entry has yet been filed, under the same 80-day limit.
  • Phase 3 (from October 6, 2026): finally liquidated entries of plaintiffs for which the court has ordered reliquidation. According to CBP’s declaration, it first notified only the plaintiffs that had submitted a valid importer of record number by July 30, 2026. The CIT said that, in its understanding, Phase 3 declarations covering 1.1 million entries and $500 million in claimed refunds had been accepted as of October 7. CBP’s refunds page (last modified September 30) still lists only Phases 1 and 2.

CBP is still “evaluating” several entry types for later phases, including drawback, warehouse, open-protest and certain antidumping and countervailing duty entries.

The gap: finally liquidated entries

Liquidation is CBP’s final computation of the duties owed on an entry. An entry is “finally liquidated,” the CIT explains, once it has been liquidated for more than 90 days, beyond the window in which CBP can voluntarily reliquidate it.

This is where small and medium importers are most exposed. According to the CIT, the government’s position is that without a court order, CBP lacks authority to reliquidate finally liquidated entries. The court has ordered reliquidation in more than 4,000 individual lawsuits. Importers that sued can now use Phase 3. Importers that did not sue, and whose entries have finally liquidated, have so far had no CAPE route.

The CIT addressed this directly on October 8: “Some importers of record have not taken advantage of CAPE. It is believed that these are overwhelmingly small importers who, because of the cost or effort involved in filing a CAPE declaration, or because they are unaware of the program, will never take advantage of CAPE.” It added that, without further action, “tens of thousands of importers of record” could be left without the liquidation or reliquidation they are owed.

The class action

The same opinion certified a class in Freestyle World. The class is: “All importers of record who paid duties imposed by the Challenged Tariff Orders between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, excluding any entity that has separately filed an action seeking to recover IEEPA duties payments.”

Four points to note:

  1. Certification is not a refund. The plaintiff seeks an injunction directing CBP to liquidate or reliquidate entries without IEEPA duties. The order certifies the class and appoints class counsel. It does not set a refund timetable.
  2. The class may not cover every IEEPA payer. A footnote in the opinion explains that “Challenged Tariff Orders” means the orders the Federal Circuit held unlawful, the trafficking and reciprocal tariffs. Importers that paid only under other IEEPA orders, such as those on Brazil (EO 14323), India over Russian oil (EO 14329), Venezuelan oil (EO 14245) or EOs 14380 and 14382, may fall outside the definition. That is a question for a trade attorney.
  3. Upcoming dates. The parties must jointly submit a proposed scheduling order by October 22, 2026. CBP must file a short CAPE progress report by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on October 26, and the court has set a closed settlement conference for October 27 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (ECF No. 60).
  4. Filing your own case takes you out of the class. The definition excludes anyone who has filed a separate action. Whether to rely on the class or sue individually is a legal decision for a trade attorney.

Separately, the government has appealed to the Federal Circuit the part of the CIT’s earlier order that provides for liquidation or reliquidation of all affected entries (for example, V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. United States, appeal No. 26-1895). On October 8, the CIT said the government and V.O.S. Selections had filed their briefs and that a decision “will be rendered in due course.”

What small and medium importers have run into

NPR followed Richard Brown of Proof Culture, a two-person sneaker accessory business that Brown runs from Ohio, which estimated it was owed up to $25,000. Brown had rarely handled customs forms and had to learn a portal he had never used. “This wasn’t my problem. And now you’re telling me if I want my money back, figure it out,” he said in an audio diary shared with NPR. NPR also reported that about a week into the process, CBP said it had rejected more than a third of filed claims for technical or data errors, though importers could refile.

Business Insider reported that Megan Sweeney, CEO of Pacific International Bearing in California, spent several weeks trying to regain access to ACE. In the same report, Justin Sherlock, CEO of tariff software company Caspian, described a structural problem: some brokers list themselves as importer of record, so the business that bore the cost cannot get a refund until the broker files.

CBP’s October 6 declaration shows how easily a filing can fail. Of 297,887 CAPE declarations submitted by October 2, 209,262 passed file validation. CBP said the main reasons for failure were importer of record or filer mismatches, invalid entry numbers, and CSV files that did not match the template. Separately, 6.2 million entries failed entry-level checks, mainly because the entry was past CBP’s 90-day reliquidation authority, had no IEEPA Chapter 99 number, or was already on an earlier declaration.

Deadlines and dates to know

  • October 22, 26 and 27, 2026: scheduling order, CAPE progress report and settlement conference in Freestyle World.
  • The 80-day CAPE window. For Phases 1 and 2, entries must be unliquidated or liquidated within the preceding 80 days. Every week that passes moves more entries outside that window.
  • 180 days to protest. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1514(c)(3), a protest must be filed within 180 days after the date of liquidation or reliquidation. CBP says entries covered by an open protest are not yet accepted in CAPE.
  • Two years for certain CIT actions. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2636(i), civil actions under the court’s residual jurisdiction must be commenced within two years after the cause of action first accrues. When that clock started for IEEPA claims is a legal question for counsel.

What a CAPE claim depends on

Based on CBP’s published guidance, a CAPE refund depends on these pieces being in place:

  1. A working ACE Portal account with the “Importer” sub-account, and ACH refund details on file for the importer of record or its Form 4811 designee. The REV-613 report shows refunds rejected for missing ACH enrollment.
  2. A list of entries with IEEPA Chapter 99 codes, with their liquidation status and dates, available from the broker or from ACE reports.
  3. A record of whether a CAPE declaration has already been filed for those entries. The ACE ES-022 CAPE report tracks this.
  4. Clarity on which party is the importer of record on each entry.
  5. Any non-IEEPA corrections filed before the declaration. Questions on finally liquidated entries and class membership are for a licensed customs broker or trade attorney.

Sources

Refund rules are still moving, phase by phase. Subscribe free to the Importer Weekly briefing to get each change, and its deadline, in your inbox.

For decisions about your own entries, refunds or filings, talk to your licensed customs broker or trade attorney.

General information, not legal or customs advice.

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