IEEPA tariff refunds widen: Customs tells the trade court 'Phase 3' will open to more importers on a rolling basis

The details

• After the Supreme Court’s February ruling that IEEPA does not authorize the president’s tariffs, the Court of International Trade ordered Customs and Border Protection to refund roughly $166 billion collected under the invalidated duties, and more than 4,000 importers have filed their own refund suits, per Supply Chain Dive.
• CBP’s refund platform, CAPE, rolled out in phases: Phase 1 (April) for unliquidated entries, Phase 2 (June) for certain reconciliation entries, and Phase 3 on Oct. 6 for entries liquidated more than 80 days — until now limited to plaintiffs whose cases produced reliquidation orders and who submitted importer-of-record numbers by July 30, per Thompson Hine and Greenberg Traurig.
• The picture changed twice this week. CBP trade chief Brandon Lord told the court in an Oct. 26 declaration that Phase 3 will broaden to more importers “on a rolling basis,” with cut-offs determined by when companies submitted their identifying information, according to Inside Trade.
• On Oct. 8, Judge Richard K. Eaton certified a class of all importers of record that paid IEEPA duties on entries from Feb. 1, 2025 through Feb. 19, 2026 and have not sued — only the second class certification in CIT history. The parties were ordered to deliver a joint scheduling proposal by Oct. 22, and the government has until Nov. 23 to appeal the certification, per Sandler Travis & Rosenberg.
• STR’s read: filing suit remains the surest and quickest refund path for substantial amounts, with reliquidation orders typically entering within a week or two; smaller claimants (under roughly $30,000) may wait on the courts. One open question per Greenberg Traurig: whether the class action pauses the two-year filing clock for class members — companies with less than $30,000 in refund exposure may consider waiting.

What buyers should do

• Export your ACE entry history now and quantify IEEPA duties paid by entry and liquidation status; you cannot choose a refund path without knowing which entries are liquidated beyond 80 days.
• File every currently available CAPE claim (Phases 1–2) and confirm your importer-of-record number is registered with CBP and electronic refunds are enabled in ACE, so you sit inside the Phase 3 rolling queue.
• With counsel, decide before the Nov. 23 appeal deadline whether to rely on the class or file an individual suit — importers with large refund exposure have the strongest case for suing now.
• Do not withdraw IEEPA-only protests until a refund or Phase 3 submission clears, per STR’s guidance.
• Book potential refunds as contingencies, not cash: the certification is appealable and CAPE timelines have slipped before. If refunds land, follow the playbook in our Levi’s reinvestment story.

The bigger picture

The refund machinery is finally catching up to the litigation while the tariff regime itself has moved on: the administration’s replacement duties — the Section 301 forced-labor tariffs now covering 60 economies, plus expiring Section 301 exclusions — are being litigated on parallel tracks. A widening, administratively run refund process is also a data trail: importers paid, protested and sued at scale, and that record will shape how the next round of tariff refunds — under Section 301 or Section 122 — gets designed.