Why Waiting on Your IEEPA Refund Could Cost You

In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Supreme Court determined that the President lacked the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”) to impose the sweeping tariffs that had been applied to imports from across the globe. The ruling covers duties on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, along with a broad range of the “reciprocal” tariffs that were announced the prior year. What the Court’s majority opinion did not address, however, was what happens next, specifically, whether and how businesses would actually get their money back. That silence has created a serious problem, because every day that passes without action brings more of those payments closer to being unrecoverable.

Here is how the process works. Importers pay tariffs at the time of entry by filing shipment details with Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”). Those filings can be reviewed or adjusted for up to one year from the date of entry. When that period closes, CBP treats the entry as “liquidated”, meaning the duty determination is final. In practice, CBP often runs its automatic liquidation cycle around 314 days after entry, though liquidation can happen sooner if the importer requests it or CBP acts on its own. Once an entry is liquidated, the importer has just 180 days to file a protest challenging the rates and seeking a refund.

Liquidation was designed to bring certainty to the customs process, to ensure that importers would not face open-ended liability on old entries. The problem is that finality cuts both ways. The fact that these tariffs have now been ruled unlawful does not mean every importer is paid back the same way. To return the money, CBP built a system called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE, which is refunding duties on entries that are still unliquidated or that liquidated only recently. CAPE does not reach entries that have finally liquidated. Once an entry has finally liquidated and falls outside the CAPE window, the government now says it will not refund it without a court order, a position it is fighting to keep on appeal. Recovering those duties becomes much harder, and a claim in the Court of International Trade is the reliable way to protect the refund, no matter how clear it is that the tariff should never have been collected.

That is why acting now is not optional, it is urgent. For entries that have not yet been liquidated, there is still time to recover through CAPE. For entries that have already been liquidated, filing a claim in the Court of International Trade is the reliable way to preserve the right to a refund, and that route carries its own deadline, which our attorneys treat conservatively as early 2027. Billions of dollars in improperly collected tariffs are at stake. Call our team today at (602) 649-3887 or fill out our contact form to schedule a confidential consultation.