IEEPA Tariff Refunds: How Importers Get Their Money Back

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. ___ (2026). The opinion runs to dozens of pages. It says nothing whatsoever about refunds.

And that silence is why importers are still fighting six months later. Customs and Border Protection collected roughly $166 billion in IEEPA duties across more than 53 million entry summaries, and getting a share of it back is a separate problem from winning the constitutional case — decided in a different courthouse, under different statutes, on a clock that is already running. Here’s where things stand as of late August 2026.

Where Do IEEPA Refund Claims Actually Go?

Not to the Court of Federal Claims. That surprises people, because a claim to recover money the government took without authority looks like a textbook Tucker Act case. But 28 U.S.C. section 1581(i)(1) gives the U.S. Court of International Trade exclusive jurisdiction over civil actions arising out of any law providing for tariffs and duties on imports, and section 1491(c) then withholds from the Claims Court “any civil action within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court of International Trade.” The Supreme Court confirmed the point in a footnote, holding that these challenges “arise[] out of” modifications to the tariff schedule and belong in the CIT.

But that routing turns out to matter enormously, and in the importers’ favor. The Claims Court, as we’ve discussed in our overview of the Tucker Act and the Court of Federal Claims, writes checks but can’t issue orders. The CIT can do both. Section 1585 gives it “all the powers in law and equity of . . . a district court of the United States,” and section 2643(c)(1) lets it order “any other form of relief that is appropriate,” injunctions included. So when Judge Eaton directed CBP in March to liquidate affected entries “without regard to the IEEPA duties,” he had authority no Claims Court judge possesses.

One doctrinal footnote worth flagging: nobody is calling this an illegal exaction. That’s the natural label for money the government took without authority, and it is a settled basis for recovery elsewhere. Here the relief has come as court-ordered reliquidation under the CIT’s remedial statute instead — a reminder that the theory follows the forum, not the other way around.

Why Liquidation Is the Whole Problem

Customs law runs on a concept most lawyers never encounter. An entry is “liquidated” when CBP finalizes the duties owed, and under 19 U.S.C. section 1504(a) an entry not liquidated within a year is deemed liquidated at the amount the importer declared. Once liquidation becomes final, the ordinary protest route under section 1514 — 180 days from liquidation — is gone, and CBP takes the position that it has no authority to reopen the entry on its own.

And everything now turns on which side of that line an entry sits. CBP built a system called CAPE to process the refunds, rolling out Phase 1 in April for unliquidated entries and Phase 2 in June for certain reconciliation entries. Phase 3 — the one covering finally liquidated entries subject to court-ordered reliquidation — was scheduled for August 20 and was postponed until further notice while CBP builds additional validations. As of August 21, importers had submitted some 272,000 declarations covering $132.5 billion, of which roughly $106.6 billion had been certified for disbursement, with interest accruing under section 1505(c).

Do You Have to Sue to Get Paid?

That is the live question, and as of this writing it has no answer. The March orders that started this reached all affected importers, filers and non-filers alike, and a later amended order extended relief to finally liquidated entries. But the government appealed that last piece in June, and its opening brief, filed August 10 in the consolidated Federal Circuit appeal, argues that CBP has no authority to reliquidate finally liquidated entries at all and leans on Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. ___ (2025), for the proposition that the relief sweeps too broadly. The Federal Circuit hasn’t set argument.

Meanwhile a mid-July CIT order directed reliquidation of entries liquidated more than 80 days earlier for the plaintiffs before it, which read to many practitioners as a signal that filing suit is what secures a refund on a finally liquidated entry. Roughly 3,700 IEEPA cases are now pending, and in the lead case, Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States, the CIT heard argument on August 19 on a motion to certify a class of importers. No ruling yet. If that motion succeeds, the non-filers may be carried along; if it fails and the Federal Circuit vacates the universal relief, the importers who never filed are left with nothing but a protest route that closed a long time ago.

What Importers Should Do Now

Start with the entry data — every IEEPA entry since February 2025, with its liquidation status and date. That single spreadsheet determines which track an entry is on and whether anything is about to expire. Then file in CAPE for what CAPE currently covers, because the unliquidated and near-liquidation entries are moving through the system now and nothing about the appeal disturbs them.

But for finally liquidated entries the calculus is harder, and the deadline is the reason to settle it soon. Actions under section 1581(i) must be commenced within two years after the claim accrues, 28 U.S.C. section 2636(i), and the prevailing view among trade practitioners is that the clock runs from the date the duties were deposited — which would put the earliest deadlines around February 2027. No court has ruled on accrual, so that view is educated and untested, and the cost of being wrong is the entire claim. Anyone who has weighed a protective refund claim in the tax context will know this posture cold: file to preserve, argue later.

The Supreme Court answered the question it was asked and went home. It struck down the tariffs and never mentioned the money — which left a $166 billion remedial problem to be worked out entry by entry, in a court most importers had never heard of, on deadlines that don’t wait for the Federal Circuit. Winning the case was the easy part.