The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) on March 4th issued an order instructing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to begin the process of issuing IEEPA tariff refunds. The ruling states that all importers who paid tariffs imposed by IEEPA action are entitled to benefit from the Supreme Court decision which struck them down.
CIT issued the following instructions to CBP:
1) Unliquidated Entries: "Liquidation" is the final computation of duties owed on an entry after payment is submitted by an importer. If an entry has not yet been liquidated, CBP must liquidate without paying IEEPA tariffs, which automatically generates a refund. After liquidation, importers have a window of 180 days to protest the charges before the entry is made final.
2) Liquidated entries (within 180-day protest period): CBP must reliquidate entries which were previously liquidated but not yet made final. The ruling states that CBP must reliquidate these entries without IEEPA tariffs, and issue refunds with interest.
3) Liquidated and Final Entries (post 180-day protest period): Entries which have been liquidated and passed the 180-day protest period may require a protest or court action.
It is expected that the Department of Justice will seek a stay on the order, further pausing refunds due to systemic limitations to reliquidating entries at this scale. If the CIT ruling remains unchallenged, the immense number of entries could take weeks or months to be reprocessed. Importers and customs brokers may experience delays as CBP develops procedures to work through the significant volume of affected transactions.
Importers are urged to register with ACH Portal and ACH Refund to receive the latest information on IEEPA refunds. They may also wish to seek legal council for advice on how to proceed. This situation is highly fluid and subject to sudden change.
O.T.S. will continue to monitor this issue and provide updates as they become available. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your O.T.S. Sales Representative for more information.