In its latest update to the Court of International Trade, US Customs and Border Protection has clarified that repayments linked to Trump-era tariff measures will not be immediate, even where eligibility is established. Instead, the agency is tying disbursement strictly to the liquidation stage of an entry’s lifecycle.
While CBP is building out a system designed to remove International Emergency Economic Powers Act duties from qualifying imports, the timing of any reimbursement hinges on that final administrative step. The agency projects that once an entry is admitted into the new process, it could take as long as 45 days before liquidation is completed and funds are returned. It also confirmed a retrospective mechanism: entries liquidated within the past 80 days may be reconsidered, with reliquidation to be finalised by day 90.
The refund pathway will run through the CAPE platform—short for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries—where importers will submit claims via a dedicated portal. That intake function, described as the first stage of the system, is nearing readiness at 85 percent completion. Other modules are progressing at a slower pace, sitting within a 60–80 percent range compared with earlier April benchmarks.
One element continues to lag: the bulk-processing engine, currently at 60 percent. Recent engineering work has focused on enabling edits to entry summaries and strengthening how historical data is tracked, alongside a validation tool that is close to being finalised.
According to a separate filing made on Wednesday, CBP still expects to open CAPE for declarations by 20 April. The Court of International Trade has requested another progress report by 14 April as development continues.
Scope has also widened ahead of launch. The initial intake will now extend to entries flagged as “suspended”, “extended” or “under review”, in addition to warehouse withdrawals. CBP does not foresee this broader eligibility affecting delivery timelines.
That said, the current design of the mass-processing function remains limited. In line with an earlier court directive, it is being built to manage only unliquidated entries. A revision issued on Friday changes that expectation, requiring the agency to incorporate finally liquidated entries into the refund framework as well.
CBP indicated that capability will be introduced in later iterations after the system goes live. At launch, the platform is expected to address around 63 percent of entries subject to IEEPA duties. In follow-up remarks, the Court of International Trade reminded importers that alternative remedies remain available, including formal protests against customs decisions.
Looking ahead, further development phases are set to expand the system’s functionality beyond refunds, adding tools for compliance oversight, validation, financial reporting and security.
On the payments side, CBP reaffirmed that electronic disbursement will be the default, with only limited exceptions. Uptake is already significant: nearly 27,000 importers have registered for digital refunds, representing 78 percent of affected entries and covering approximately US$120 billion in IEEPA tariff payments.
The post Importers face 45-day wait for tariff repayment appeared first on Air Cargo Week.
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Author: Edward Hardy
