Tariff refunds of US$35.5 billion cleared for importers so far

[NEW YORK] The Trump administration is in the process of issuing more than US$35.5 billion to importers who successfully filed for tariff refunds after the US Supreme Court found the president’s signature economic policy unlawful, according to a new court filing.

The payments are being processed through a new online government portal and will include interest on duties paid across more than eight million import entries, said Brandon Lord, executive director of trade programmes for the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Trade.

As at May 11, the tool designed to handle claims on the US$166 billion in duties that were overturned had validated nearly 87,000 declarations it received so far, clearing the way for the Treasury Department to issue payments to those importers. About 126,000 declarations had been received in total since the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or Cape, launched on Apr 20, Lord said.

The scramble for refunds started immediately after the Supreme Court ruled Feb 20 that US President Donald Trump unlawfully used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or Ieepa, to impose tariffs on goods entering the country. The court’s 6-3 decision did not address the question of refunds, leaving it to the lower courts to hash out.

So far, more than 8.3 million of the accepted entries have been reprocessed to remove Ieepa duties. The court filing also said that 1,880 consolidated refunds have not yet been sent to Treasury because the importer had not yet provided bank account information.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott discussed the refund process at a closed court hearing on Tuesday (May 12), and the agency was instructed to file another update on May 26, according to an order filed by Judge Richard Eaton of the US Court of International Trade.

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Eaton said that there was a discussion of Cape’s “subsequent functionality”, and the court was made aware that CBP is in contact with surety companies regarding their refund claims.

CBP had said in earlier court filings that the first phase will not be able to accept claims for more than a third of the import entries at issue. The remaining entries have more complicated circumstances, and Customs officials have not specified a schedule for rolling out future phases of the refund programme.

Payments for some of the first refund requests started reaching importers early last week, earlier than expected. BLOOMBERG