IE importers face a tariff-refund deadline: file by early 2027 or forfeit

The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February, and Customs and Border Protection has been refunding them through an automated portal called CAPE since April. Most importers don't have to do anything beyond filing a claim. That's true for newer entries — cargo not yet finalized, or finalized within the last 80 days.

It stops being true for older cargo. Customs uses the term "finally liquidated" for entries past that 80-day window — the final accounting is closed. On June 2 the Justice Department appealed the order requiring refunds on those entries, arguing Customs has no authority to reopen them for any importer who didn't file an individual suit at the Court of International Trade.

Under the government's position, the late-July phase of the refund portal that covers finally-liquidated entries will process only for importers who have already sued. By recent count, about 4,000 importers have. Everyone else may wait indefinitely — and possibly never collect — on their oldest entries.

The clock is the part operators can act on. The trade court's jurisdiction carries a two-year limit. For the earliest IEEPA cargo, entered in early 2025, that window starts closing in early 2027. An importer who waits to see how the appeal resolves can lose the right to file before the appeal is even decided.

This lands unevenly in the Inland Empire for a specific structural reason: the refund flows only to the importer of record on each entry, and in a region where third-party logistics firms and warehouse operators clear cargo for clients, the IE company on the customs paperwork is often the one holding the claim — and the one facing the deadline. CBRE ranked the Inland Empire first in the nation for large industrial leases last year, with third-party logistics firms its most active occupier class. How many of those firms have early-2025 entries sliding toward finality is not a number anyone publishes. The exposure is real; its size in the IE is unmeasured.

The practical read for any IE business that paid the tariffs: pull your entry liquidation dates, find out which sit past the 80-day line, and weigh the value of those entries against the cost of a protective filing — before the calendar, not the appeal, makes the decision.