How to Claim IEEPA Tariff Refunds in 2026 After the Supreme Court Ruling

On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President cannot impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and with that one decision a large slice of the duties American importers paid across 2025 became refundable. The case is Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287, and the Court held the IEEPA tariffs invalid from inception, which means they were never lawfully owed. At GetTransport.com we move client cargo into the United States and reconcile the freight-and-duty bill, so when a duty regime collapses overnight our phone starts ringing. Importers want to know how much of what they paid is coming back, and how they claim it before the window closes. The refund machinery is live and the sums involved are enormous, but the process is not automatic and the government is contesting how far it reaches, so timing and paperwork matter more than most people realize. In this guide I will explain what the ruling did, which of your duties are refundable and which are not, how the CAPE process works and who it reaches first, and what the government's appeal means for your money.

What the Supreme Court actually ruled

The decision is narrow in one sense and sweeping in another. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump the Court decided, by a 6-3 vote on 20 February 2026, that IEEPA does not give the President the power to set tariffs at all. IEEPA is an emergency-powers statute, and the majority found that the authority to regulate importation in that law never stretched to imposing duties. Because the power was absent from the start, the tariffs are void from inception rather than simply cancelled going forward. That distinction is the whole reason a refund is even on the table, since money collected under an authority that never existed has to come back.

What the ruling did not do is just as important. It did not restore the de minimis exemption. That suspension rests on separate legal authority, so it survives this decision untouched, and low-value shipments do not automatically get their old treatment back. I flag this because clients keep assuming the two are linked, and they are not.

Which duties are refundable, and which you still owe

This is the part that decides how big your check is. The ruling reaches the IEEPA duties, and only those, so two buckets are refundable. The first is the IEEPA reciprocal tariff, the rate of 10% or higher applied to imports from most countries starting in April 2025. The second is the IEEPA fentanyl tariff, which added 10% on Chinese-origin goods and 35% on certain Canadian and Mexican-origin goods. If you paid either of those, that money is in scope.

Now the trap. Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs are not IEEPA tariffs, and the Supreme Court did not touch them. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum, autos, and pharmaceuticals rest on a different statute and remain fully owed, and the Section 301 duties stand on the same footing. I cannot stress this enough, because importers see the words tariff refund in a headline and assume everything comes back. It does not. If you want the detail on why those measures survive, we lay it out in our guide to the Section 232 tariffs that are still owed and not refundable.

How the CAPE process works and who it reaches first

You do not have to sue to get your money, but you do have to claim it. On 4 March 2026 the Court of International Trade ordered CBP to liquidate or reliquidate entries that are not yet final without regard to the IEEPA duties. To run that at scale, CBP built a system it calls CAPE, short for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, which went live on 20 April 2026 and is reached through the ACE portal. The correction to a common assumption is that CAPE is not an automatic rebate. Importers file refund claims through it, and CBP then recalculates the duty as if the IEEPA charge was never there.

CAPE also rolls out in phases, so who gets in first matters. The opening phase reaches entries that are still unliquidated, plus entries that liquidated within roughly the past 80 days. Anything older sits outside that first wave and becomes a slower story, usually routed through a formal protest rather than a simple claim. The money in play is enormous, with estimates putting the total IEEPA duties collected across 2025 at roughly $166 billion to $175 billion, and processing has been accelerating since the spring. The practical read is that an importer with recent entries should file now, while one with older entries needs the protest route instead.

Why protests matter before an entry finalizes

Here is where we spend most of our time with clients. Once an entry liquidates and its protest period runs out, the entry is final, and a final entry is far harder to reopen. Two clocks are running at once, and people confuse them. The opening CAPE phase only reaches back about 80 days, while the statutory window to file a protest on a liquidated entry runs 180 days from the date of liquidation. Law firms tracking this closely, including Holland & Knight and Norton Rose Fulbright, have been telling importers the same thing we tell them, which is not to sit on your hands if an entry is close to finalizing.

The protective move is to preserve your rights on those at-risk entries. Depending on the entry's status, that can mean filing a protest to keep it open, or requesting an extension of liquidation so it does not finalize while the litigation plays out. Your broker and surety are the right partners for the mechanics, and both PwC and Steptoe have published practical walk-throughs. The point I want to land is simple: a refund you are entitled to can still be lost if the entry finalizes before you act.

What the government's appeal means for non-plaintiffs

There is a live catch, and it is why I am not telling anyone to spend the refund yet. On 3 June 2026 the Department of Justice filed notices of appeal. The government is not arguing that the invalidated tariffs are somehow owed again. It is challenging the nationwide, universal scope of the order, arguing that the Court of International Trade should not be able to direct refunds to every importer in the country rather than only the named plaintiffs in the case. If that argument lands, the broad process could be narrowed toward the actual parties, and everyone else might have to pursue their own claims to recover.

So the refundability of the tariff itself is settled, but the route for a non-plaintiff importer to get paid is being litigated. That is exactly why the protective step matters. An importer who preserves its rights now is covered whichever way the appeal lands, while one who waits is betting the broad process survives intact. Check too that your bond position can absorb the swing, and our explainer on continuous versus single-entry customs bonds covers how sureties weigh exposure when duties are in flux.

A refund checklist for importers and forwarders

Below is the exact sequence we run with an importer client the week they ask us about a refund. It works whether or not the appeal has resolved.

• Pull your entry summaries, the CBP Form 7501 line items, for every import since April 2025 and flag the IEEPA reciprocal and fentanyl duties specifically.
• Separate out any Section 232 and Section 301 amounts, because those are not refundable and lumping them in will overstate what you are owed.
• Check the liquidation status and date of each entry. Unliquidated entries and those liquidated within about 80 days fall in the first CAPE phase, while older entries need a protest filed within the 180-day window.
• File your claims through CAPE in ACE, and work with your customs broker and surety on protests or protective claims for entries close to finalizing.
• Prepare for scrutiny, because filing a refund claim can prompt CBP to review your wider entry history for classification, valuation and origin, so make sure that record is clean before you file.

For most of the importers we work with, the bottleneck is not the legal question but the reconciliation: matching each CBP Form 7501 against the broker's ACE records and the surety's bond ledger, entry by entry, to see which line items carried the reciprocal or fentanyl charge. At GetTransport.com we sit on the freight-and-duty side of that reconciliation, so we help clients tag the in-scope entries and hand their broker a clean list before the liquidation dates arrive. With the total collected running into the hundreds of billions and the non-plaintiff route still under appeal, the importers who recover the most will be the ones whose 2025 entry data is already sorted, well ahead of the moment an entry goes final.

Frequently asked questions

Which tariffs can I actually get refunded?

Only the IEEPA duties the Supreme Court invalidated on 20 February 2026: the reciprocal tariff of 10% or higher applied from April 2025, and the fentanyl tariff of 10% on Chinese-origin goods and 35% on certain Canadian and Mexican-origin goods. Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos, and pharmaceuticals, along with the Section 301 tariffs, are not affected and remain fully owed.

Is the refund automatic, or do I have to file?

You have to file. Despite the headlines, CAPE is not an automatic rebate. Importers submit refund claims through CAPE in the ACE portal, and CBP then reliquidates the entry without the IEEPA duty. The opening phase covers entries that are unliquidated or that liquidated within roughly the past 80 days. For older entries you generally need a protest, which must be filed within 180 days of liquidation.

How much money is involved?

A great deal. Estimates put the total IEEPA duties collected across 2025 at roughly $166 billion to $175 billion, and CAPE has been processing eligible claims at pace since it opened on 20 April 2026. How much of that reaches non-plaintiff importers depends on the government's appeal over the order's scope.

Could the government's appeal stop my refund?

It could affect the reach, not the underlying ruling. On 3 June 2026 the Department of Justice appealed the nationwide scope of the order, arguing the Court of International Trade cannot direct refunds to importers who were not named plaintiffs. The tariffs are still invalid, but a non-plaintiff's route to payment is being litigated, and that uncertainty is the main reason we advise clients to preserve their rights on at-risk entries now rather than wait.