U.S. Tariff Refund Portal Opens Today. Here Is What Importers Need to Know.

The U.S. government's tariff refund portal opened today, April 20, giving importers their first opportunity to begin recovering billions of dollars in duties paid under President Trump's IEEPA tariffs, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in February. The system, called CAPE, went live at 8 a.m. EST inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection's existing ACE Secure Data Portal.

The Background

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump had overstepped Congress's tax-setting authority when he imposed sweeping import tariffs last April under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, citing the US trade deficit as a national emergency. The court did not address refunds in its ruling. A judge at the US Court of International Trade subsequently determined that affected importers were entitled to money back, and CBP was ordered to develop a refund mechanism.

CBP estimates it owes a total of $166 billion in tariff refunds across more than 53 million shipments from over 330,000 importers. As of April 14, 56,497 importers had registered for electronic payments and are eligible for refunds totaling $127 billion including interest.

How CAPE Works

CAPE, which stands for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, is designed to process refund claims in bulk rather than on an entry-by-entry basis. Importers of record or their licensed customs brokers file a CAPE Declaration, which is a structured CSV file listing the entries for which they are requesting IEEPA duty refunds. The file is uploaded through the CAPE tab inside the ACE Portal.

Once submitted, CBP runs two rounds of validation. The first checks the CAPE Declaration file itself. The second checks the individual entries listed. For validated entries, CBP removes the IEEPA tariff line items, recalculates the duties owed without them, and proceeds with liquidation or reliquidation. Refunds are consolidated by importer and liquidation date and paid electronically via ACH. Once a CAPE Declaration is accepted, it cannot be amended. Additional eligible entries require a new filing.

CBP estimates that valid refunds will be issued within 60 to 90 days of a claim being accepted, unless a compliance issue triggers further review.

What Phase 1 Covers and What It Does Not

Phase 1 is intentionally narrow. It covers two categories of entries:

• Unliquidated entries — tariffs that have been assessed but not yet finalized by CBP
• Entries within 80 days of liquidation — tariffs finalized by CBP on or after approximately February 1, 2026

Sanne Manders, president of global logistics company Flexport, estimates Phase 1 covers approximately 63% of all IEEPA duties paid. The remaining 37% involves more complex scenarios deferred to later phases, including entries finalized more than 80 days ago, entries tied to drawback claims, and entries under protest proceedings. CBP has not announced firm dates for Phase 2 or Phase 3, but industry sources expect the rollout to continue through the summer and fall of 2026.

Several entry types are excluded from Phase 1 entirely, including reconciliation entries, entries subject to antidumping or countervailing duties pending liquidation, Foreign Trade Zone entries, and temporary importation under bond entries.

What Sellers and Importers Should Do

Refunds are not automatic. Every importer must actively file a CAPE Declaration to receive money back. CBP has the data, but the agency is placing the burden on importers to identify eligible entries and submit claims.

Key steps before filing:

• Confirm ACE Portal access. Only the importer of record or a licensed customs broker who filed the original entries can submit a CAPE Declaration. If your company used a broker, confirm which entity is the importer of record and who will file on your behalf.
• Verify ACH enrollment. All refunds are issued electronically. Importers must have US bank account information on file in ACE. Claims will not be paid without it.
• Pull an IEEPA-specific entry report. Ask your customs broker to generate a report separating the IEEPA portion of duties from other tariff layers such as Section 301 or Section 232. Only IEEPA duties are eligible for refund.
• Prioritize data accuracy. A single formatting error or incorrect entry number can cause an entire declaration to be rejected. Submissions that are rejected must be resubmitted from scratch.

The Retailer and Consumer Question

For many businesses further down the supply chain, the refund picture is complicated. Tariffs are paid by importers, not retailers or consumers. Retailers who paid higher wholesale prices because their supplier absorbed the tariff cost are not automatically entitled to a direct refund. Some are hoping suppliers will pass savings along through discounted wholesale pricing on future orders.

Consumers are not eligible to file claims through CAPE. FedEx has committed to passing refunds down to customers who paid tariff surcharges directly. Whether prices fall more broadly for consumers is harder to predict, as tariff costs were often absorbed by multiple parties along the supply chain during 2025.

The tariff environment also remains unsettled. The Trump administration is pursuing alternative legal mechanisms to reinstate most of the struck-down tariffs, including invoking Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act to impose a 15% tariff on most countries. Refunds may be incoming, but new tariff exposure is not off the table.