Here is the basic shape of the IEEPA refund situation as of early June. The Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs in February. The government had collected roughly $166 billion under them. Customs and Border Protection has now refunded approximately $20.6 billion, with another $85 billion accepted for processing through the new CAPE portal that opened April 20. That leaves around $60 billion in what we will politely call the gray zone, and roughly $39 billion that the government has told the court it cannot yet process through the existing system. The court, as you might expect, is not delighted by this.
What CAPE actually does
CAPE is the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries tool, and it lives inside the ACE Portal. It is the only mechanism CBP is using to issue IEEPA refunds, and Phase 1 covers a deliberately narrow slice of the universe: unliquidated entries, plus certain entries liquidated within the previous 80 days. CBP has reported that around 75,000 declarations have been submitted, and approximately 84% of validated entries pass entry validation, with refunds running through ACH on a rolling basis.
The bank account problem
One detail worth surfacing because it is genuinely fixable: court filings disclosed that 4,185 consolidated refunds could not be transmitted to the Treasury because the importers in question never provided account information for electronic transfer. If you are an importer of record and you have not confirmed your bank account details in the Importer sub-account in ACE, the refund cannot move. This is the easiest unforced error to avoid in the entire process. CBP is not going to mail anyone a paper check.
The complicated half
The harder problem, and the one the court is now focused on, is what happens to the entries that fell outside Phase 1. There are two main categories. First, entries that had been finally liquidated before CAPE opened, meaning the 90-day re-liquidation window had closed. Second, and more significantly, the millions of informal entries where liquidation happens essentially at the moment of entry, making them finally liquidated long before CAPE existed.
The administration’s position has been that those importers need to either file a protest, sue in the Court of International Trade, or wait for a later CAPE phase that has no firm timeline. The court’s position, as of last week, is that this is not good enough. On May 27, Judge Richard Eaton of the CIT lifted the stay in V.O.S. Selections and ordered the parties to explain why CBP should not be required to refund all IEEPA duties regardless of liquidation status. He also ordered CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to appear in person at a June 9 hearing to answer questions about timing.
The government, in its objection, said this fails to present the type of “extraordinary circumstances” required to compel a high-level official to testify. The judge denied the objection the same day, writing, simply, “There is $166 billion involved.”
The appeal
On May 29, the Justice Department filed notice that it will appeal Judge Eaton’s broader order, the one requiring CBP to recalculate tariff amounts for all importers who paid IEEPA duties, not just those who sued. The government’s argument is structural: it reads the order as a nationwide injunction, which it says is barred under the Supreme Court’s recent birthright-citizenship ruling. The practical effect, depending on how the appeal goes, could be a system where some importers (the ones who sued) get refunded automatically, and the rest have to file individually.
This is the part of the story that has not played out yet, and it is also the part that determines whether the refund process expands or narrows from here.
What to do now
A few things are worth doing now rather than later.
Confirm your ACH banking information is loaded in your ACE Importer sub-account. Without it, your refund sits in limbo regardless of how strong your claim is.
Two hearings to watch from here: June 9 (Commissioner Scott in court) and June 11 (closed settlement conference). We will continue to update you as new information becomes available.