US says $20.6 billion of tariff refunds on the way to importers

Approximately $20.6 billion is on its way to importers who successfully filed claims using the new web portal developed by US Customs and Border Protection, the agency said Tuesday in a court filing.

However, the government’s latest declaration to the US Court of International Trade also included an admission of a significant error in its last report to the federal judge overseeing the tariff refund process, showing the value of the refunds being processed in the early weeks of the program was far lower than previously thought.

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Two weeks ago, a US trade official said that more than $35.5 billion in refund claims were being processed. Yet that number “was overstated by approximately $10 billion,” according to Brandon Lord, executive director of trade programs for CBP’s Office of Trade. The actual amount was closer to $25 billion.

“This was not a reflection of any error in CAPE processing or refunds, but rather was the result of an inadvertent error in the data query used to calculate the figure,” said Lord, referring the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, which it developed following the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned a large swath of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Approximately $85 billion in both potential and certified refunds have been accepted for processing in CAPE as of May 22, he wrote. The $20.6 billion figure reflects money that’s made it to the final stage of being disbursed to importers.

Lord said that number includes interest as well as the base amount in tariffs, but didn’t include a breakdown of those two amounts.

CBP is in the process of issuing refunds to importers who paid as much as $166 billion across more than 53 million import entries. The effort is being overseen by the Court of International Trade, which has requested regular updates from the agency.

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According to Tuesday’s update, nearly 16 million entries with duties imposed under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, had been accepted in the first phase of the refund effort, and 8.5 million of those have been reprocessed without the duties and certified for repayment to importers.

Lord also noted in the filing Tuesday that more than 4,000 consolidated refund payments haven’t been sent to the Treasury Department yet because importers haven’t set up digital payment capability.