US Customs is expanding its refund portal to cover roughly 95% of the $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February, even as the Justice Department asks an appeals court to wall off the final tranche from importers who never sued.
The expansion: CBP's CAPE portal has handled unliquidated entries and recent liquidations since April.
Two new phases open it up: reconciliation-flagged entries ($28.7 billion) go live June 29, and finally-liquidated entries, worth $11.4 billion, follow in late July.
Together that brings about 95% of the 53 million tariffed entries into a refund path.
The numbers so far: CBP had accepted $94.94 billion in claims as of June 5, sent roughly $24 billion to Treasury for disbursement, and is targeting about $60 billion by the end of June.
More than 4,000 refund consolidations are stuck at Treasury for a mundane reason: missing ACH banking information.
The fight: DOJ appealed the trade court's universal refund order to the Federal Circuit on June 2, arguing CBP "has no authority to reliquidate or refund money without a court order" once an entry is finally liquidated.
An estimated $30 billion sits at risk for importers who never filed suit. CBP is building the plumbing anyway: Executive Assistant Commissioner Susan Thomas told the court June 9 the agency is "working on the functionality" to process those entries.
By entry bucket:
Unliquidated, or liquidated within 80 days: eligible for CAPE now. Flexport found a 20% average error rate reviewing other brokers' submissions, so a pre-filing review is worth the time.
Reconciliation entries (Type 09): filing opens June 29; importers whose reconciliation deadline falls within 30 days should not wait.
Finally liquidated: the legal-risk bucket. For entries near the 180-day finality cutoff, trade counsel may recommend a protective Court of International Trade filing now rather than waiting on the appeal's outcome.
ACH refund enrollment in ACE is the other pressure point: processed refunds cannot disburse without it, and more than 4,000 consolidations are already stalled at Treasury on that basis.
The clock: the statute of limitations for a CIT suit runs out around February 2027, two years after the first IEEPA collections.
