U.S. to launch tariff refund portal after Supreme Court rejects Trump tariffs

U.S. importers began the long climb toward getting their money back as Customs and Border Protection opened a new refund portal for tariffs the Supreme Court struck down two months ago. The first phase, which starts with more recent payments and unliquidated or recently finalized entries, is designed to push refunds through the Automated Commercial Environment rather than forcing companies to chase relief shipment by shipment.

The system, called CAPE, short for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, opened Monday at 8 a.m. and will let importers and customs brokers file claims electronically. CBP says approved refunds could take 60 to 90 days to issue, and the agency plans to consolidate eligible claims into a single electronic payment with interest when applicable. That matters for cash flow: the money is moving first to importers, not directly to consumers, though companies may use the refunds to rebuild margins, cover working capital, or hold down prices they would otherwise pass along.

The scale is enormous. The government could owe businesses roughly $166 billion to $175 billion after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on February 20 that Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping global tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Customs has said more than 330,000 importers paid those tariffs on more than 53 million shipments. As of April 9 or April 14, 56,497 importers had registered for refunds covering about $127 billion in eligible duty payments, or roughly 82% of the initial rollout.

The refund process is likely to be messy. Trade lawyers say the burden falls on importers to identify qualifying entries, file claims accurately and work through technical hurdles in ACE, the government’s electronic trade system. Attorneys have warned that mistakes in a declaration could sink an entire entry or line item, and smaller importers have worried that the administrative cost of pursuing refunds could outweigh what they recover. CBP is expected to start with simpler, newer entries before moving to cases that may require manual processing.

The Supreme Court did not spell out how refunds should work, leaving CBP to build a system from scratch at a scale the agency has never handled before. The U.S. Court of International Trade separately ruled last month that companies hit by the IEEPA tariffs are entitled to refunds, and business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Main Street Alliance had pressed for a clear path back to cash. Trump later imposed a new temporary global tariff under a different law, which has also been challenged in court, underscoring how far the fight over executive trade power still reaches beyond this first unwind.