U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced this week that it has finalized $20.6 billion in tariff refunds so far for duties charged under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. These tariffs, enacted by President Donald Trump last year, were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.


CBP currently estimates that U.S. importers paid as much as $166 billion in IEEPA duties across more than 53 million entries. Nearly 16 million entries have been accepted for the first phase of the IEEPA refund effort, with about half of them reprocessed and certified for repayment thus far.

In an update filed with the Court of International Trade earlier this week, CPB said it’s on track to process an estimated $85 billion in both potential and certified refunds (including interest) that have been accepted for processing in CAPE in its first month.

The agency also corrected an error from a previous report that overstated the value of the refunds already processed by approximately $10 billion. Originally estimated at approximately $35 billion, the more accurate figure is $25 billion. Brandon Lord, executive director of trade programs for CBP’s Office of Trade, stated in the report that the discrepancy was due to “an inadvertent error in the data query used to calculate the figure” rather than a processing problem.

CBS News has reported that several million entries have been rejected so far, mostly for data entry errors or because they are not IEEPA payments and therefore not eligible. (See CBP’s error definitions here.)

ICYMI: Tariff Refund Process Begins; Eligibility, Timeline Explained

Importers seeking to check their eligibility, submit refund documentation or monitor the status of existing claims should refer to the official IEEPA resources available through the CBP portal. The agency has issued a warning atop its IEEPA Duty Refunds page to beware of scammers using social media, email and other communication methods to obtain proprietary information from importers. Key precautions include:


While the refunds roll out, there is also a renewed legal challenge to Trump’s older tariffs. Thousands of U.S. importers have petitioned the Supreme Court since 2020 to overturn the expansion of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods implemented during Trump’s first term. While the plaintiffs’ core arguments have been rejected thus far by the U.S. Court of International Trade and the Federal Circuit, the February ruling striking down the IEEPA duties has encouraged several of those plaintiffs to ask the Supreme Court to review their case.

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Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to pursue other methods for imposing import duties:

  • In March, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative launched investigations into 60 trading partner nations into potential forced labor and overproduction allegations, a step required to enact new tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
  • Almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruled against the IEEPA tariffs in February, the president ordered a temporary, blanket 10% duty under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. (That tariff is set to expire July 24.) On May 7, the federal Court of International Trade ruled against the new Section 122 duty, but that ruling – since paused at the request of the administration – only applied to a handful of the plaintiffs in that specific case.


ICYMI: ‘Unrealistic:’ The Complicated Supplier Perspective Of Passing Down Tariff Refunds

PPAI will continue to monitor these developments and provide updates. Subscribe to PPAI Newslink to have these delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.