Richard Eaton

Rule Changes

Overseeing the IEEPA tariff refund process

The U.S. government has never had to give back $166 billion it collected illegally — until now. On April 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched the CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) portal for importers to reclaim tariff payments that the Supreme Court ruled the president had no authority to collect. The first phase covers $127 billion across more than 56,000 registered importers. But the launch was rocky: the system displayed 'high volume' errors within hours of going live, with some users encountering duplicate Tax ID errors and others spending hours on hold trying to resolve account access issues before they could even file a claim. Trade attorneys warned that technical glitches are not merely annoyances — delays can cause importers to lose refund rights permanently.

Updated Apr 21