US opens refund portal to start paying back Trump's illegal tariffs

Katie Hilferty, who oversees the trade practice at the Washington law firm Morgan Lewis, described the refund process as novel and complex, adding that she would be “pleasantly surprised” if refunds were paid as quickly as the government said. But, she added, given the scale of the operation, “I would not be surprised if there are technical glitches or other processing errors that occur.” CBP said the first phase of CAPE refunds is “limited to certain unliquidated entries and certain entries that are no more than 80 days past liquidation.” It’s not clear when the remaining refunds will be issued as the CBP says it is still working out how to implement future phases. The government has been required to provide updates to the US Court of International Trade. “CBP continues to identify and evaluate more complex refund scenarios and determine what additional CAPE capabilities are necessary to address those scenarios,” the agency said in a March 31 court filing. Phase 1 “will be capable of processing approximately 63 percent of entries for which IEEPA duties were paid or have been deposited,” it said. A coalition of US states sued Trump in response to the 10 percent tariff. “Having lost the battle on IEEPA, the President now dusts off a separate statute: Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, 19 U.S.C. § 2132, which is another statute that has never been used to impose tariffs. Indeed, it has never been used at all,” the states’ lawsuit said. The Trump administration also “opened investigations into dozens of other countries’ trade practices” under another provision of the Trade Act, and these “inquiries are expected to result in tariffs similar in magnitude to those that the Supreme Court struck down,” The New York Times article said. There is a separate dispute over who should receive refunds in cases where surety bonds were issued for imports but the importer or broker failed to pay the tariff. A trade group that represents surety and insurance professionals told the court on Friday that its members have paid millions of dollars to CBP “on entries where importers (or their brokers) have failed to pay estimated or liquidated tariffs issued under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.” “Customs has not included (or even mentioned) sureties in its development of CAPE and its reports to this Court, despite the fact that limiting refunds to importers and brokers will inevitably lead to IEEPA tariff refunds being issued to importers, instead of to the sureties who actually paid the IEEPA tariffs directly to Customs,” the International Trade Surety Association said in the court filing. The group said it “advised Customs of the need to include sureties in Phase One of CAPE. While Customs has acknowledged our concerns, they have not indicated to us that the omission will be corrected, nor has Customs mentioned sureties or this issue in its presentations to the Court.”