A refund system for businesses that paid tariffs ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court is set to open Monday morning, giving importers and their brokers a way to start seeking money back through an online portal at 8 a.m. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will run the process, and approved claims are supposed to be paid in 60 to 90 days.
The launch matters because the government says it will not process every claim at once. It will move in phases and start with more recent tariff payments, leaving some companies to wait even after the portal goes live. Customs said the first phase is limited to cases where tariffs were estimated but not finalized, or where payment was made within 80 days of a final accounting.
The refund process follows the court fight over tariffs imposed under emergency powers. In a 6-3 decision on Feb. 20, the Supreme Court said Trump usurped Congress' tax-setting role last April when he raised import tax rates on products from almost every other country, invoking a 1977 emergency powers law and citing the U.S. trade deficit as a national emergency. Last month, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade said companies hit by the tariffs were entitled to money back.
Customs and Border Protection said in court filings that more than 330,000 importers paid about $166 billion on over 53 million shipments. As of April 14, 56,497 importers had completed registration and were eligible for refunds totaling $127 billion, including interest. Importers must register for CBP’s electronic payment system to receive refunds, and the agency says the filing itself has to be clean.
“If there is an entry on that file that does not qualify, it may cause the entire entry to be rejected or that line item might be rejected by Customs,” Meghann Supino said, warning that early mistakes could slow or block claims. She added that, “Like any electronic online program that goes live with a lot of interest, I would expect that there might be some hiccups with the program on Monday,” and asked companies to be patient because “we think that patience will pay off.” Nghi Huynh said the goal is to keep track of what has been submitted and paid so “nothing falls through the cracks,” but he cautioned that “each file can include thousands of entries,” and submissions can be rejected if formatting or data is incorrect.
The first companies to move through the system are likely to get answers before the rest, but the larger question is how long it will take for the money to reach the businesses that advanced it in the first place. If importers eventually pass the funds to customers, that too may happen slowly, after the tariff refund process works its way through the backlog and the paperwork matches the payments.