Customs and Border Protection has told a federal court that the last stage of its IEEPA refund system opens on October 6. Roughly 11.4 billion dollars is at stake, and only importers who sued can touch it
By the US Trade Desk
WASHINGTON, September 20, 2026. United States Customs and Border Protection has confirmed that the third and final phase of its automated refund system for tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act will deploy on October 6, 2026, according to a declaration filed with the Court of International Trade on September 15 by Brandon Lord, and reported across the trade press over the following week.
Phase 3 covers the category that has resisted resolution since the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs seven months ago: entries that have been liquidated for more than 80 days, where CBP’s own statutory authority to reopen the liquidation has lapsed. CBP puts the value of that category at roughly 11.4 billion dollars, about 7 percent of the total IEEPA take.
The catch is who qualifies. Only importers of record who are plaintiffs in a pending case at the Court of International Trade, whose entries are covered by a court reliquidation order, and whose counsel supplied a valid importer of record number to CBP by July 30, 2026, may file when the system opens. Everyone else waits, possibly indefinitely.
“Phase 3 marks the next stage of the IEEPA refund process, but it is not a general administrative refund program,” wrote Kelly M. Reid of Ward and Smith, P.A., in an analysis published on September 18. “Importers whose entries are not covered by comparable court ordered relief do not become eligible for Phase 3 merely because the system opens on October 6, 2026.”
Pete Mento, managing director of global trade advisory services at Baker Tilly, put it more colloquially in a post quoted by Supply Chain Dive on September 17: “For businesses waiting on finally liquidated IEEPA entries, this is a meaningful development. But please read the eligibility requirements before telling your CFO to start spending the refund. Your litigation status and the applicable court orders still matter.”
How 166 billion dollars became a plumbing problem
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, consolidated with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., holding 6 to 3 that IEEPA’s authority to regulate importation during a declared emergency does not include the power to impose tariffs. The Court reasoned that Congress has consistently used explicit language when delegating tariff authority, with defined limits on scope, duration and procedure, and that the absence of such language in IEEPA was decisive. Justices Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh dissented. Three members of the majority reached the result through the major questions doctrine.
The Court issued no directives on enforcement, refunds or remedies. That single omission is the origin of everything that followed.
At the time of the ruling CBP had collected roughly 166 billion dollars in IEEPA duties and estimated duties from more than 330,000 importers across more than 53 million entries. There was no mechanism to give it back. Ordinary customs refunds run through liquidation and protest procedures designed for individual entries and individual disputes, not for a nationwide unwinding.
Judge Richard K. Eaton of the Court of International Trade issued the first operative order on March 4, directing CBP to liquidate unliquidated IEEPA entries without regard to the IEEPA duties and to reliquidate liquidated entries for which liquidation was not yet final. Two days later the court suspended the immediacy requirement so CBP could build an automated tool, requiring periodic status reports instead.
That tool is CAPE, the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, which lives in the ACE Secure Data Portal. Phase 1 deployed at 8 a.m. Eastern on April 20, 2026, handling unliquidated entries and entries within 80 days of liquidation. Phase 2 followed on June 29, adding reconciliation flagged entries of types 01, 02 and 06 with no type 09 reconciliation entry on file.
Phase 3 was originally promised for the end of July. It slipped to August 20, which was missed. On August 21 CBP told the court it was temporarily delayed pending additional validations. September 15 brought the October 6 date.
The 80 day line, and why it is not 90
The distinction that trips up most importers is administrative, not statutory.
Under 19 U.S.C. 1501, CBP may voluntarily reliquidate an entry in any respect within 90 days of the original liquidation. CAPE Phases 1 and 2 cut off at 80 days. The ten day margin is CBP’s internal processing buffer: validate the declaration, strip the IEEPA Chapter 99 provisions, review the revised entry and complete reliquidation before day 90 arrives. CBP told the court in a March 31 declaration that it set the limit “to ensure that processing is complete and the entries are reliquidated by the 90th day.”
On day 81 an entry is still inside the statute but outside Phase 1. After day 90 CBP’s position is that it can no longer reopen the liquidation on its own authority. That is precisely why Phase 3 runs on a court order rather than on Section 1501, and why eligibility is tied to litigation status rather than to the calendar.
The July orders directing reliquidation set two conditions: plaintiff’s counsel must provide CBP with the plaintiff’s importer of record numbers, and CBP must accept the plaintiff’s CAPE declaration before reliquidation occurs. The orders do not authorise CBP to revisit unrelated aspects of the entry, and they expressly reserve separate disputes over de minimis treatment under 19 U.S.C. 1321.
A terminology warning is in order. “Finally liquidated” is used loosely across advisories. Some practitioners use it for entries past both the liquidation cycle and the 180 day protest period. Others use it for anything past day 90. The Cato Institute defines it as more than 180 days past liquidation. The two definitions produce materially different populations, and importers should establish which one a given adviser means.
Where the money actually is
The most recent figures, drawn from the Lord declaration and reflecting data as of 3 p.m. Eastern on September 11, give the clearest picture available of a process that has moved faster than its critics acknowledge and slower than its beneficiaries need.
CBP has received 286,044 CAPE declarations, of which 201,293 passed file level validation. Those covered 27.2 million entries, of which 19.94 million have been liquidated or reliquidated without IEEPA duties. Roughly 134.7 billion dollars in potential and certified refunds has been accepted for processing, and roughly 122 billion dollars, including interest, has been certified and sent to Treasury for disbursement.
The trend line is steep. As of May 11 the figure sent to Treasury was around 35.5 billion dollars. By June 29 it was 71.1 billion actually paid out. By July 14, about 86.3 billion. By August 21, about 106.6 billion. By September 11, about 122 billion.
Roughly 6.1 million entries failed entry level validations, mainly because the entry date fell beyond CBP’s 90 day reliquidation authority, because the entry carried no IEEPA Chapter 99 heading, or because it had already been filed on a prior declaration. About 85,000 declarations failed file level validation outright, usually because of importer of record and filer mismatches, invalid entry numbers, or a CSV file that did not match the ACE template.
And 20,184 refunds worth roughly 1.3 billion dollars are approved but stranded because the importer of record, or its designee under CBP Form 4811, never supplied bank account information. Refunds are ACH only, under Executive Order 14247 and the interim final rule on electronic refunds that took effect on January 2, 2026. A company that has not enrolled has money sitting in a queue it cannot see.
Beyond the three phases, the Cato Institute has calculated a further 25 billion dollars or so in entries that CAPE does not reach at all: those subject to antidumping or countervailing duty proceedings, those with active drawback claims or open protests, and those never filed in ACE. CBP has published no timeline for any of them.
One figure requires a flag. Holland and Knight reported in June that the government had estimated exposure on finally liquidated entries at potentially more than 30 billion dollars, against CBP’s 11.4 billion. The discrepancy most likely reflects different measurement dates, since the finally liquidated universe grows every day as entries age out, or a broader definition. Neither number should be used without the caveat.
The appeal that decides everyone else’s fate
For the 326,000 or so importers who never sued, everything turns on a case now before the Federal Circuit.
On April 17, 2026, the Court of International Trade entered a broader order in V.O.S. Selections directing CBP to reliquidate all liquidated entries, including those for which liquidation was already final, and not limited to named plaintiffs. The government appealed at the start of June. Four appeals were consolidated as V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, No. 26-1895, and the government filed its opening brief on August 10.
Notably, the government is not appealing the plaintiff specific July orders. Its brief states it intends to comply with those. It is appealing only the part that would reach non litigants.
The argument has three parts. First, relying on Trump v. CASA, Inc., that the trade court lacks equitable authority to issue relief benefiting nonparties. Second, party presentation: the court granted relief at a scale no plaintiff had requested, without adversarial briefing on that remedy. Third, that the court never made the traditional findings required for injunctive relief, including irreparable harm. Separately, the Justice Department argues the court lacks jurisdiction to order refunds on entries whose liquidation is final unless the importer files its own residual jurisdiction action.
Importers answer that the Court of International Trade is not an ordinary district court. Its jurisdiction is tied by statute to the uniform administration of customs duties, and 28 U.S.C. 2643 authorises money judgments and “any other form of relief that is appropriate.” They argue that the constitutional requirement that duties be uniform supports uniform implementation, and that the concern animating CASA, which is nationwide policy imposed before the merits are settled, is absent here because the Supreme Court has already held these tariffs unlawful from inception.
The reasoning will matter more than the result. If the Federal Circuit holds flatly that the trade court cannot extend equitable relief to nonparties, the April order stops being a refund route for anyone who did not sue. If it vacates narrowly, because the lower court failed to make equitable findings or because the remedy was not properly presented, other routes to broad relief may survive.
Two class certification motions run in parallel and would survive either outcome. The V.O.S. Selections plaintiffs moved on June 4 under CIT Rule 23(b)(2) and were heard on August 6. A separate proposed class in Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States, on behalf of importers of record who paid IEEPA duties and have not filed individual actions, was argued on August 19. Both were outstanding as of this week.
Holland and Knight’s assessment of where that leaves the unrepresented majority is the bluntest on the record: “The government’s current position is that importers who did not file at the CIT may wait indefinitely, and perhaps permanently, for refunds of finally liquidated entries.”
Who is getting paid, and who is not
The distributional pattern is the most uncomfortable fact in the file, and it comes from CBP’s own numbers.
Cato analysts Scott Lincicome, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon and Chad Smitson found in July that while CBP had approved refunds covering roughly 60 percent of the government’s total obligation, that 104.3 billion dollars covered only 30 percent of the import entries on which IEEPA tariffs were paid. Approved refunds are concentrated in large, high value entries. Cato reports that Judge Eaton himself observed that most refunds so far had gone to large importers such as Walmart and Ford.
“The deck is stacked against small firms that lack the resources to fight for and obtain what the government owes them,” the Cato authors wrote. Their broader warning: “Collectively, the government’s actions indicate that it could end up keeping tens of billions of dollars that it unlawfully confiscated from US importers, through absolutely no fault of their own.”
The mechanics explain the pattern. Setting up an ACE account reportedly takes three to four weeks, against a 90 day window. Only the importer of record or the broker that filed the entry summaries may submit a CAPE declaration. CBP Form 5106 importer records must be current and must carry an email address that is not the broker’s. Errors requiring a post summary correction must be fixed before the CAPE declaration is filed, and CBP has told the customs broker association that entries outside the post summary correction window “will need to wait for another CAPE deployment.”
Matthew Seligman, founder of Grayhawk Law, told Fortune in April: “Especially given the uncertain legal environment that we’re operating in right now, I am deeply worried that small and medium sized importers are going to end up losing their refund rights because they haven’t had access to trade counsel to help back them through it.” He added that portal errors are not merely delays. “These types of glitches, again, are not just delays. They are delays that can lead to ineligibility, and potentially, if importers don’t have appropriate counsel, can result in permanent loss of refund rights.”
The cash flow damage in the meantime has been real. A Federal Reserve small business survey published in March found 42 percent of small firms citing rising tariff driven costs as a primary financial concern. A Center for American Progress report the same month put average small business tariff payments at 306,000 dollars over the prior year. Dan Anthony of the group We Pay the Tariffs told Fortune he had spoken with owners who increased lines of credit and took second mortgages on their homes against the promise of refunds. “That’s money that they need to come back so they can climb out of that debt,” he said. He also captured the compliance burden neatly: “What you end up with is small business owners or someone who does product development, who is now expected to be a tariff expert.”
A secondary market has emerged. Some importers have used refund claims as loan collateral. Others have sold the rights to claims outright for immediate cash.
Congress weighs in
On September 9, ten House members led by Representative Haley Stevens wrote to CBP Commissioner Scott with a specific and damaging allegation: that CBP is failing to approve importer ACE accounts within 90 days of liquidation, making it impossible for some importers to meet CBP’s own deadline.
“In short, CBP’s administrative backlogs are preventing companies from receiving refunds,” the letter states. It continues: “Under no circumstances should these companies bear the brunt of both the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court and the denial of tariff refunds because of administrative mismanagement of the CAPE system.”
The letter’s framing of the underlying equity is worth quoting in full: “American importers are not seeking remedy for small errors in classifying or appraising goods at the border. They are seeking restitution for an illegal tariff regime that wreaked havoc on their businesses for roughly a year. CBP’s arbitrary deadlines and internal processing backlogs shouldn’t stand in the way of making small businesses whole again.”
Whether CBP has responded is not publicly known.
In CBP’s defence, the scale is genuinely unprecedented. In the whole of the last fiscal year the agency processed 338,000 entries with tariff refunds of any kind. In the first six weeks of CAPE Phase 1 it processed IEEPA refunds on nearly 8.5 million entries.
What to do between now and October 6
Map your entry universe by phase and by liquidation status. Run ACE reports from February 1, 2025 filtering for Chapter 99 IEEPA provisions in the 9903.01 and 9903.02 ranges. Foley and Lardner notes that many entries liquidate far earlier than importers expect, particularly informal and low value entries and those affected by post summary corrections, so the finally liquidated bucket is often larger than assumed.
Fix ACH and ACE account data now. The 1.3 billion dollars sitting in the stranded queue is the single most avoidable loss in this process.
Consider a protective action under 28 U.S.C. 1581(i) if you have material finally liquidated exposure. Foley and Lardner describes such a filing as an insurance policy that “does not require abandoning CAPE; instead, it expands the types of refunds that can occur through it.” Holland and Knight makes the same point.
Be careful with protests. CAPE will not accept an entry summary with an open or suspended protest, and CBP expressly permits withdrawal of an IEEPA only protest so the entry can proceed. But withdrawing a protest that also covers classification, valuation or origin can forfeit unrelated rights, and under Section 1514(d) a Phase 3 reliquidation does not reopen the entry for issues not involved in that reliquidation. Reid’s warning bears repeating: a protective protest should not be assumed to stop the limitations clock for a separate residual jurisdiction action, and the Federal Circuit’s decision in Mitsubishi Electronics America holds that an unnecessary protest does not toll it.
Watch the accrual question. The two year period under 28 U.S.C. 2636(i) runs from when the claim first accrues, and whether that means duty payment, liquidation or the date of the Supreme Court decision is contested. The period is non jurisdictional under Ford Motor Co. v. United States, so tolling is available, but nobody should be relying on it.
Finally, note who can collect. Only the importer of record has standing to receive a refund directly from CBP. Anyone else who bore the economic burden, including customers who paid a tariff surcharge passed through by the importer, is limited to whatever their contract provides. Nathaniel Bolin and Karla Cure of K and L Gates predicted on the day of the Supreme Court ruling that these commercial disputes “are likely to drag on for months or even years, creating additional challenges for some companies.” Seven months on, that looks conservative.
One small but telling detail: as of this week there appears to be no CBP CSMS message announcing Phase 3. Every operational detail the trade has comes from a litigation declaration filed on September 15. Importers are learning the filing rules for a federal refund programme by reading a court docket.