The Trump administration has begun accepting applications from businesses seeking refunds for more than $166bn in tariffs, months after the supreme court ruled that the president had no legal authority to impose them.
The administration launched on Monday the digital claims system, named Cape, which they said in court filings could handle about 63% of affected import filings, with the remainder to follow.
Writing for the majority in February, Chief Justice John Roberts said the 1977 emergency statute Trump had invoked provided no such sweeping authority to implement the tariffs. Two of the president’s own appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, joined the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh were the dissenters.
In court filings, customs officials acknowledged they had to construct an entirely new processing infrastructure essentially from scratch, including grappling with the fact that they initially had no mechanism to deposit money directly into most importers’ accounts.
More than 3,000 companies have reportedly already sued the administration to secure their refunds, with some filing their cases even before the supreme court had issued its verdict – an indication of how confident the business community had become in the legal merits. Among the most high-profile plaintiffs are Skechers, Revlon, Toyota, Nintendo of America, FedEx and Costco.
The only companies legally eligible to claim are those that officially paid the tariffs – predominantly importers and large corporations. The broader population who absorbed the cost through higher prices on everything from electronics to clothing has no direct recourse. Whether ordinary Americans see any benefit depends entirely on the businesses that stand to collect.
FedEx has said it will pass refunds back to the customers it shipped goods for, since it was those customers who footed the bill for the tariffs in the first place. Costco has suggested it could lower prices if it gets money back, but some shoppers are already suing the retailer, unconvinced that a vague promise of cheaper goods is good enough.
Businesses can expect to wait 60 to 90 days from submitting the paperwork to Customs and Border Protection to the money landing in their account.
However, the system has some limitations in its first phase: it will only fully process refunds for entries that are either unliquidated or liquidated within the past 80 days, but businesses whose goods are tied up in legal disputes, anti-dumping investigations, or other unresolved customs processes will not be able to claim yet.
