Importers who paid duties imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act may have a meaningful refund opportunity.
At a June 9, 2026 hearing before the U.S. Court of International Trade in VOS Selections, Inc. et al. v. United States et al., the status of IEEPA duty refunds came into sharper focus. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) indicated that it is developing the system capability to process refunds for entries liquidated more than 80 days ago, a category that currently covers more than $11 billion in IEEPA duties. CBP expects that capability to be operational by the end of July.
That is the good news. The harder news is that CBP does not appear prepared to issue those refunds automatically. At the hearing, CBP said it does not believe it has legal authority to pay refunds on entries liquidated more than 80 days ago without an importer-specific court order, and indicated that it would not withdraw its appeals of the universal orders requiring blanket refunds. In practical terms, CBP may soon have the machinery to process refunds, but not the authority it believes is needed to issue payment absent individual relief.
That distinction matters. Many companies have assumed that a universal order, class action, or government-administered process may ultimately resolve refund rights for everyone. That assumption now carries risk. If CBP’s position holds, importers that have not filed their own actions may be waiting for a remedy that remains uncertain, contested, and potentially unavailable before the deadline to file their own cases.
What Should You Do Now
Companies with meaningful import volumes should focus first on entries liquidated more than 80 days ago. Those entries are most directly implicated by CBP’s stated Phase III refund capability.
Importers should ask three practical questions now:
- Did the company pay IEEPA duties?
- Were any of those entries liquidated more than 80 days ago?
- Has the company filed an action at the Court of International Trade to protect its refund rights?
If the answer to the first two questions is yes and the answer to the third is no, the company should quickly evaluate whether an individual filing is warranted.
This is not a recommendation that every importer file reflexively. It is a recommendation that importers assess their exposure, quantify the potential refund opportunity, and determine whether an individual court action is warranted. Given the current posture, however, filing before late July may be advisable for many importers. That timing aligns with CBP’s expected Phase III capability and may better position companies if importer-specific court orders become the practical requirement for payment.
Why This Matters Beyond the Refund
The IEEPA refund issue also illustrates a broader point about trade risk. Tariff exposure is no longer solely a cost-management issue; it is also a legal and procedural one. Companies need to understand not only what duties they paid, but also how those duties can be challenged, preserved, and recovered.
That requires customs expertise, litigation experience, and a practical understanding of how the Court of International Trade and CBP operate. It also requires speed. As refund systems, court orders, appeals, and class certification proceedings move on parallel tracks, importers that wait may find their options narrowing.
How We Can Help
A&M’s Global Trade and Customs team, in collaboration with Broadfield, helps importers evaluate potential IEEPA duty refund claims and, where appropriate, file actions in the Court of International Trade. We have filed a significant number of these cases and developed an efficient process for assessing eligibility, preparing filings, and moving quickly when timing is critical.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Jason Kenner is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Tax in New York, where he works in A&M’s Global Trade and Customs practice, and a Senior Trade Counsel at Broadfield. He has nearly 20 years of customs and trade experience as both a government and private practitioner. Before joining A&M, he served as Head of Litigation at Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg P.A. He also spent nearly 15 years at the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Trade Field Office, where he represented U.S. Customs and Border Protection before the Court of International Trade and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Will Marshall is a Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal Tax in New York and leads A&M’s Global Trade and Customs practice, and Senior Trade Counsel at Broadfield. He has more than 25 years of international trade experience spanning the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. He advises clients on customs and international trade structuring, duty optimization, regulatory disputes and controversies, high-stakes investigations, and trade remedies.
