Tariff refund system to be ready in 45 days, says US Customs and Border Protection official

A tariff refund processing system should be in place within 45 days, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent said to the US Court of International Trade (CIT) on Friday. 

As reported by Reuters, Brandon Lord, the CBP official, explained to CIT Judge Richard Eaton that the agency expects the system to require a single filing declaration from importers regardless of the number of shipments involved. After requests are processed and validated, businesses will receive a one-time payment refund from the US Treasury Department, which, Lord said, would include interest. 

The official didn’t say how long this process would take, nor when importers could start seeing their tariff refunds. 

Sweeping tariff refunds require their own system

In his March 6 ruling, CIT Judge Richard Eaton had ordered CBP to issue refunds for unlawfully collected tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) using the agency’s Automated Customs Entry (ACE) Portal. 

The platform, he argued, automatically issues payments without any input from importers, but Lord explained the system was not designed to handle sweeping refunds at such a large scale. 

In his declaration, Lord explained that the agency is currently facing refunding over $166 billion in unlawfully collected levies to more than 330,000 importers on more than 53 million shipments. Using the ACE Portal, the CBP official said, the task would take around four million labor hours. 

As a result of the declaration, Judge Eaton lifted the order requiring immediate compliance with his ruling, granting CBP more time to establish a functional platform to begin the tariff refund process. 

Over 2,000 new lawsuits have been filed at the CIT since Friday, but Judge Eaton, who’s in charge of hearing all claims regarding the IEEPA tariff refunds, said interested parties won’t need to sue the government to requests refund. 

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