In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not give the executive branch the power to impose tariffs. Duties collected under that authority were unlawful. The practical consequence is that importers who paid IEEPA tariffs in 2025 and early 2026 are owed money — and the clock on getting it back is already running.
This post is a plain-English explainer of what the Court decided, how big the refund pool actually is, which tariffs the ruling covers, and why the most important date in your calendar right now is 180 days after your entry was liquidated. We will not speculate about appeals, politics, or what comes next for trade policy. This is about the rules that apply to refund claims today.
What the Court actually decided
The case turned on a narrow but consequential question: does IEEPA, a statute Congress passed in 1977 to give the President economic tools to address foreign threats, authorise the imposition of tariffs? The Supreme Court held that it does not. Tariffs are a form of taxation the Constitution places with Congress, and IEEPA — whatever else it permits — is not a delegation of that power.
The ruling is final at the Supreme Court level. Duties assessed under IEEPA authority in 2025 and 2026 were collected without a lawful basis. That applies both to the so-called “reciprocal” tariff layer and to the additional tariffs imposed on imports from China and Hong Kong.
Two things the ruling does not do:
- It does not refund money automatically. Refunds require a claim — either a Form 19 protest filed with CBP, or a submission through the new CAPE portal once CBP opens it.
- It does not cover every tariff your business pays. Section 301 duties on Chinese goods and Section 232 duties on steel and aluminium come from separate statutes. The IEEPA ruling leaves them in place. See our IEEPA vs Section 301 and 232 breakdown for which of your duties are affected.
How much money is actually at stake
On March 4, 2026, the US Court of International Trade entered an order directing CBP to process refunds on IEEPA-collected duties. The court quantified the universe in the record: roughly $166 billion in duties, spread across approximately 53 million entries, affecting around 330,000 importers of record.
Those figures are from the public court record, not a trade-press estimate. They matter because they tell you two things:
- The pool is enormous, and the average recovery per affected importer is in the low-to-mid six figures. Most small and mid-sized importers have never recovered this much money from a single event in their operating history.
- The process is going to be congested. 330,000 importers and 53 million entries is not a volume CBP processes quickly under ordinary circumstances. Importers who file early — before a surge — will be paid first.
One important hedge: the government retains the right to seek appellate review of the CIT’s refund order. That process could delay disbursement. It does not change the Supreme Court ruling on IEEPA authority, and it does not change the 180-day window to file a protest. Those deadlines run whether or not the appeal is filed.
The deadline that quietly destroys claims
Every import entry in the United States follows a predictable lifecycle: it is entered, the duties are paid, CBP reviews the entry, and at some point CBP liquidates it — issuing a final determination of the duty owed. Liquidation starts a clock.
Under 19 U.S.C. § 1514(c)(3), an importer has 180 days from the date of liquidation to file a protest. Miss that window and the protest right is gone. CBP cannot extend it. A protest filed on day 181 is denied as a matter of jurisdiction, not discretion.
The 180-day rule applied before the Supreme Court ruling, and it still applies now. The ruling does not reset the clock. An importer whose entries liquidated in late 2025 is already past the easy window, and every week that passes removes more entries from the eligible pool. See our deep-dive on the 180-day deadline for the full rule and how it interacts with the new refund mechanics.
What CBP is building — and why you should not wait for it
CBP is standing up a new refund system called CAPE(Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries). CAPE is being built as a module inside the ACE platform and will accept bulk claims by CSV upload. It is intended as the main channel for IEEPA refunds going forward.
Two things about CAPE that most coverage glosses over:
- Refunds are not automatic. CBP has been explicit that importers must actively submit claims. If nobody files on your entries, the money stays with Treasury.
- CAPE does not help an entry that has already become final. Whether an entry has passed the finality threshold is a question CBP has not fully resolved — the relevant statutes are 19 U.S.C. § 1501 (90-day voluntary reliquidation) and 19 U.S.C. § 1514 (180-day protest). Filing a protest while the window is still open is the conservative way to keep an entry alive for the CAPE channel.
We unpack CAPE in depth in the CAPE refund portal explainer, and the “file a protest as insurance” argument in this follow-up.
What an importer should do this week
If you imported goods in 2025 or early 2026 and paid reciprocal or China/Hong Kong tariffs, three things are worth doing immediately:
- Pull your entry summaries. You need entry numbers, duty paid, and — critically — the liquidation date for each entry. Your customs broker has this. So does CBP.
- Calculate the deadline for each entry. Add 180 days to the liquidation date. Entries with deadlines in the next 60 days are urgent. Entries already past the deadline cannot be protested, though they may still be eligible for CAPE depending on the finality question above.
- Decide whether to file a protest now or wait for CAPE. For entries near the deadline, waiting for CAPE is a gamble on a system that is not live yet. Filing a protest preserves the claim in a channel that has existed for decades and is backed by explicit statutory authority.
How Tariff Spot fits in
Tariff Spot exists to make step three cheap, fast, and something an importer can do without hiring a customs broker or a trade attorney. You tell us which entries, we generate a complete CBP Form 19 protest citing the Supreme Court ruling as the legal basis, and we mail it to the correct port of entry in the quadruplicate format CBP requires. You remain the filer of record — we prepare documents, the importer signs and files them.
The flat fee covers the full package: form, legal argument, mailing, and the envelope. There is no percentage cut and no recovery-based contingency. If you are staring at dozens or hundreds of entries and a looming 180-day deadline, that is what we built this for.
Ready to look at your entries? Start a refund claim — it takes about ten minutes per entry to generate the protest package.