The tariff refunds are flowing to whoever held the import-of-record line — which in the IE often isn't the tenant
Citrus Belt Review: U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Court of International Trade this week it expects to add two new functions to its CAPE refund system — covering reconciliation entries (roughly $28.7 billion) by late June and finally liquidated entries (about $11.4 billion) by late July. Once both are live, CBP's Susan Thomas said about 95% of all entries that paid IEEPA tariffs would be refund-eligible. The agency has already processed $94.94 billion in refund claims as of June 5. The catch sits in the plumbing: every refund routes to the importer of record on the entry, and nobody else in the chain can file. Not the broker, not the freight forwarder, not the firm that absorbed the duty.
That distinction lands hard here. CBRE's full-year 2025 leasing report ranked the Inland Empire first in the nation for large industrial leases — 14 of the 100 biggest, totaling 11.8 million square feet — and named third-party logistics firms the most active occupier class in the region, part of a national jump to 44 of the top 100 leases from 28 a year earlier. CBRE's own market outlook spells out why retailers hand distribution to 3PLs: import flexibility and capital preservation. Both phrases describe arrangements — DDP terms, 3PL-as-importer structures — where the logistics provider, not the brand-owner, is named on the customs entry. Trade counsel has flagged the same trap nationally: firms that shifted to Delivered Duty Paid terms during the 2025 tariff window may have moved importer-of-record status onto a carrier, leaving the company that paid for the goods unable to claim the refund.
Layer on a second mismatch. CBP's guidance holds that warehouse entries keep their liquidation status — their refunds wait until liquidation rather than riding the 60-to-90-day path open to ordinary entries. A region whose business is holding imported goods in bonded and distribution space is, by that rule, structurally back of the line. The national story is a windfall arriving on a clean timeline. Read against the IE's tenant mix, the inference runs the other way: the operators most exposed to the tariffs are disproportionately the ones whose refunds are either slowest to arrive or sitting in someone else's name. And the whole schedule still hangs on a live DOJ appeal at the Federal Circuit, which argues the courts can only order refunds for importers who actually sued — narrowing the universe further.
For IE operators, the practical read is unglamorous: pull the Form 7501s, confirm whose importer-of-record number is in box 23, and find out early whether the refund is yours to claim or your logistics partner's.