The US government is cutting checks. Big ones. US Customs and Border Protection has certified $20.6 billion in tariff refunds to importers who filed claims through a newly launched web portal, marking the first major wave of reimbursements after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) earlier this year.
Here’s the thing: this $20.6 billion is just the opening act. CBP estimates that total refunds could reach up to $85 billion across multiple phases, a figure that would represent a significant chunk of the roughly $166 billion originally collected under the now-invalidated IEEPA tariffs.
How the refund machine works
To handle the sheer volume of claims, CBP built something called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, or CAPE. It lives inside the existing Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) that importers already use for trade documentation. CAPE went live on April 20, 2026, and by May 22, it had already processed the $20.6 billion in certified refunds sent to the Treasury for disbursement.
Instead of forcing importers to file refund requests one shipment at a time across potentially thousands of entries, CAPE lets them upload bulk CSV files covering multiple entries at once. The scale of the underlying problem explains why this kind of infrastructure was necessary. The original IEEPA tariff collections spanned approximately 330,000 importers and 53 million individual entries. CBP is also not charging any fees for processing the refunds.
