The Court of International Trade (CIT) ordered CBP to issue refunds for IEEPA tariffs for the following entries:

Entries that have not yet liquidated: CBP is directed to liquidate those entries without regard to the IEEPA duties.
Entries for which “liquidation is not final”: CBP is directed to reliquidate these entries without regards to the IEEPA duties.

What do these instructions mean?
A large majority of entries subject to IEEPA tariffs remain unliquidated. Based on CIT instructions, CBP is supposed to liquidate these entries without the IEEPA tariffs and issue refunds. The refunds should be issued with interest. There is also a question of timing. Will the liquidation of these entries occur on the normal 314 day entry liquidation cycle or on an accelerated basis?

Entres for which “liquidation is not final” refers to entries that liquidated within the last 90 days. The CIT instructions would require CBP to reliquidate this class of entries without the IEEPA tariffs and issue refunds to importers.

What about entries for which liquidation is final? The CIT did not address this grouping of entries. We still need to wait for CIT instructions on this issue.

When will importers begin to see refunds?
There is a good chance that the U.S. government will appeal this CIT decision. If there is an appeal, importers may need to wait longer to see refunds. An appeals process could still take months.CBP also needs time to begin programming changes for refunds.

What should importers do now?
CBP will no longer issue paper check refunds. They will only issue refunds electronically. It is SUPER IMPORTANT for importers to get their ACE Portal account set up. Once they have the ACE portal account, importers need to navigate to the ACH Refund Authorization tab and input their banking information.

We recommend that importers organize a record of entries for which IEEPA tariffs were paid.