Kim Quoted on Strategies and Roadblocks to Recoup IEEPA Tariff Duties

James said, “The companies that are taking the most aggressive approach are filing lawsuits in an abundance of caution to make sure they can recover the refunds. Others are filing administrative protests, while others are waiting for the [US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)] system to come up. No one really knows for certain what they should be doing because the Supreme Court was completely silent on the whole refund process.”

He noted that a significant problem is that CBP’s refund system, Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), may not capture all refund-related administrative claims because of the way it’s designed.

“When companies import goods and pay tariffs, that’s really a deposit or an estimate of what tariffs they think they should pay,” he said. “Then CBP has almost a year to finalize that duty assessment and say the company owes more or paid too much.”

James added that while the US Court of International Trade has recently ordered CBP to start issuing refunds for duty assessments that are final, the agency said that CAPE’s first iteration won’t be designed to handle the ordered refunds.

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