The duties at the centre of this are the ones the United States stacked on Chinese-origin goods through 2025: the "reciprocal" tariff announced in April 2025 and the fentanyl tariff layered on top. On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3, in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act never gave the president the authority to impose them (CNBC, 30 May 2026). The tariffs were unlawful and the money has to come back. Everything since has been a fight about who gets paid, and how fast.
These refunds cover the IEEPA duties only. The separate Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs on Chinese goods rest on different laws and were left standing, so this gives back one layer of the stack, not the whole thing. Even so, it is a large layer. US Customs and Border Protection estimates it owes roughly $166 billion to about 330,000 importers, and it has started paying. The first refunds reached bank accounts the week of 11 May 2026, and by a 26 May court filing around $85 billion of claims had been accepted into CBP's system with $20.6 billion certified and sent to the Treasury (CNBC, 30 May 2026).
Who the refund pays, and who it skips
CBP processes the money through a tool called CAPE inside its ACE portal, which opened on 20 April 2026. Two rules in that system decide whether anything reaches you. A refund is paid only to the importer of record named on the customs entry, or to a party that importer formally designated, and only by transfer to a US bank account already on file (US Customs and Border Protection, IEEPA Duty Refunds, May 2026). The money tracks the name on the entry, not the factory in Shenzhen and not the freight forwarder who booked the container. And Phase 1 covers only entries that are unliquidated or within 80 days of liquidation; anything that closed out earlier waits in a queue for a later phase with no firm date.
The paperwork is where claims are dying. In a 26 May update, CBP reported that nearly a third of refund declarations failed the first validation check, usually because the importer-of-record details did not match or the entry numbers were wrong, and that about 22% of the entries that cleared that step failed the next one (Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, 28 May 2026). Thousands of approved refunds are sitting unpaid because the importer never added bank details to its portal account. Being owed the money and collecting it are two different jobs, and the gap between them is clerical.
The appeal, and the date on the calendar
On 27 May 2026 the Court of International Trade ordered CBP's commissioner to appear in person on 9 June and explain why the agency should not be forced to refund every eligible importer immediately, including the millions of small "informal" entries that have already closed (Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, 28 May 2026). Two days later the Justice Department signalled it would appeal the part of the order that extends refunds to all importers rather than only the companies that filed suit, with a filing expected in early June (CNBC, 30 May 2026). More than a thousand firms have already lodged their own cases.
If that appeal lands, the dependable refund pool narrows to importers who filed a clean claim or otherwise preserved their position. That is the difference between treating this as automatic and treating it as a deadline.
What to do this week
This is a US program, run by US Customs, and it touches only goods imported into the United States. If you bring Chinese goods into the EU, the UK or anywhere else, it does not apply to you. The principle underneath it does. The importer of record is the party customs deals with, for the duty going in and for any refund coming back, so an entry filed cleanly in your own name is what lets you claim now and defend an audit later.
For US importers, a short list before 9 June. Confirm with your customs broker that a CAPE claim has actually been filed for your 2025 entries that carried the IEEPA duties, rather than assuming it is handled. Load your US bank details into your ACE portal account, because an approved refund will not pay out without them. And ask your broker how to protect entries that fall outside the 80-day window before liquidation closes the door on them.
The thread through all of it is documentation in your own name. That is the same discipline that decides whether a DDP shipment leaves you as the clean importer of record or buried under a forwarder's paperwork, and the same reason the importer of record carries the duty bill when a charge is owed. A Mila agent runs your order so the customs entry and the contract line up with the real supplier from the start, inside the WhatsApp thread you already follow.
Sources: US Customs and Border Protection, IEEPA Duty Refunds (CAPE), updated May 2026; CNBC / Associated Press, Trump plans to appeal order allowing all importers to seek tariff refunds, 30 May 2026; Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, IEEPA tariff refunds see challenges as CIT considers further action, 28 May 2026.