While the Supreme Court told President Trump he does not have the authority for use of IEEPA to impose broad, sweeping tariffs, we already knew President Trump had other ideas in his back pocket. He has already announced plans to invoke use of Section 122, which allows tariffs up to 15%, but only for 150 days and, after which, must be approved by Congress.
So what about refunds? Well that’s a good question. The Supreme Court ruling merely says he does not have the authority, so lower courts are going to have to decide the outcome. While it should be everyone (illegal is illegal), the administration recently requires (as of Feb 6), in order to cut down on fraud, importers sign up for an ACE portal account to receive refunds via ACH.
Still many unanswered questions to play out through the lower courts to get answers. Are brokers going to be required to do post summary corrections on all the entries that haven’t liquidated yet? Customs has the temporary legislation numbers that would indicate IEEPA tariffs, so it could be easy to automatically do it. What about the entries that have liquidated? What about entries that may be approaching end of protest period? All these we are just going to have to watch for more results from the lower courts and instructions from Customs, but just know that’s exactly what we are monitoring.