Overview
In March and April 2026, the US Court of International Trade (CIT), in both Euro-Notions Florida, Inc. v. United States and Atmus Filtration, Inc. v. United States ordered CBP to liquidate unliquidated entries without regard to International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) duties and to reliquidate any liquidated entries for which liquidation is not final without regard to IEEPA duties.
In response to these orders, and after subsequent briefing before the CIT, on April 20, 2026, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched the first phase of the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) tool (CAPE Phase 1) in CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal, enabling importers or customs brokers to submit IEEPA duty refund claims. CBP has developed CAPE to administer many IEEPA refund claims efficiently and in a consolidated manner, rather than on an entry-specific basis.
CAPE Phase 1 Process Eligibility
Since our last blog post, CBP has provided further guidance about the eligibility criteria under this refund mechanism. Importantly, the entries subject to the CAPE mechanism are (1) unliquidated entries, (2) certain entries within 80 days of liquidation (i.e., enabling CBP to process and reliquidate entries by the 90th day to meet the agency’s legal timeframe for voluntary reliquidation pursuant to 19 U.S.C. § 1501), and (3) entries with a liquidation status of "suspended," "extended," or "under review," as well as warehouse and warehouse withdrawal entries. CBP stated that entries that are suspended, extended, or under review will not be immediately processed, but will maintain their liquidation status until resolved, and any refund, if validated, will be issued following liquidation.
Furthermore, CBP has explained that numerous other categories of entries will not be eligible for CAPE Phase 1, as CBP is still developing mechanisms to address these categories of entries as discussed below in the "Future Considerations" section. Specifically, CAPE Phase 1 will not cover (1) entries for which liquidation is final (by which they seem to mean liquidation that is more than 80 days old), (2) entries that have been flagged for reconciliation, as well as Entry Type 09 – Reconciliation Summary, (3) entries on a drawback claim, (4) entries covered by an open protest, (5) entries not filed in ACE, and (6) entries without a liquidation status in ACE entries subject to antidumping and/or countervailing duties, for which the Department of Commerce has issued liquidation instructions, that are pending liquidation in accordance with 19 USC. § 1504(d).
CAPE Phase 1 Preparation Requirements
For importers of record (IORs) or authorized Customs Brokers to best situate themselves for a CAPE refund, they should consider the following steps:
- Organize effected entries by liquidation date (to the extent the entries have been liquidated).
- IORs and authorized Customs brokers should have an established ACE Secure Data Portal account.
- All refunds are required to be paid electronically via Automated Clearing House (ACH), so refund recipients must use the ACE Portal account to provide CBP with bank account information for refunds.
- IORs and authorized Customs brokers submit CAPE Declarations (discussed further below) in the ACE Portal.
CAPE Process
Through the CAPE claim portal, the importer of record, or an authorized broker, can submit IEEPA refund requests on eligible entries, referred to as CAPE Declarations. As part of these Declarations, the filer will upload a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file, identifying the entry summaries for which IEEPA refunds are requested. A template CSV file can be found in the "CAPE Upload" dialog box in ACE. The CSV file will contain a list of entry numbers for which IEEPA refunds are requested.
Each individual CAPE Declaration is limited to 9,999 entries, but multiple CAPE Declarations may be submitted. The system will automatically remove any IEEPA HTS numbers from the entry summaries and then will conduct normal ACE duty calculation validations to confirm the duties owed. Essentially, duties will be calculated as if the IEEPA duties had never been declared. CAPE will then liquidate or reliquidate the validated entries on a scheduled date and process refunds electronically through ACE to the designated bank account and will include an amount of interest calculated pursuant to 19 C.F.R § 24.36.
Once CBP undergoes mass processing of an IOR’s CAPE Declaration, CBP estimates that unliquidated entry summaries will be set to liquidate 45 days from the CAPE Declaration acceptance date, and those liquidated entry summaries will reliquidate the next business day. CBP anticipates valid IEEPA refunds for unliquidated entries will generally be issued within 60 to 90 days following acceptance of the CAPE Declaration, unless a Declaration warrants further CBP review for compliance concerns.
Future Considerations
On April 28, 2026, CBP provided an update to the CIT, explaining that, as of April 26, a total of 75,306 CAPE Declarations have been submitted, of which a total of 47,315 Declarations passed the file validations and were further prepared to be refunded, which cover a total of 11,222,927 entries, or approximately 21% of the total entries.
Of the over 11 million entries, approximately 1,740,000 entries, or roughly 3% of the total entries, have been liquidated and are in the refund process. CBP anticipates issuing the first refund on or about May 11, 2026. Although CBP reported that the use of CAPE Phase 1 has largely been smooth for users, according to a closed conference held with Judge Richard K. Eaton (the CIT judge overseeing all IEEPA refund cases), CAPE Phase 1 applicants have faced some concerns including problems accessing ACE, due to, for example, long wait-times to reset usernames and passwords, over-registration of training events, and confusion with respect to identifying the correct importer to make a CAPE declaration. CBP is also expected to issue further guidance about its calculation of interest for impacted entries.
Although CAPE Phase 1 addresses a significant volume of entries, it still leaves large numbers of entries tentatively unrefunded, namely the entries whose liquidation is "final." On April 1, 2026, Judge Eaton stated "that {because} no resolution has been reached with respect to the reliquidation, by way of CAPE, of entries for which liquidation has become final, importers should be aware of the remedies available under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 (Protest against decisions of Customs Service)."
Furthermore, CBP has stated in declarations to the CIT that once Phase I of CAPE is completed, CBP "expects to develop" additional "functionalities" so that CAPE will be able to address "more complex refund scenarios." To date, CBP has not provided guidance on the refund of entries that are "final" or those refunds that are seen as "complex." Considering the ongoing ambiguities related to a significant volume of imports, importers seeking to protect the maximum number of entries eligible for a refund should continue to consider filing their own complaint at the CIT and filing one or more protests with CBP to guard against potential gaps in CAPE refund coverage.
Because it remains unclear when entries will become "final," importers with 2025 liquidations, in particular, should file protests with CBP in a timely manner in accordance with Judge Eaton's guidance. On the other hand, CBP acknowledges that if a protest has been submitted for IEEPA refund purposes and the entry is within 80 days of the liquidation date, and importer may withdraw the protest and add the entry to a CAPE Declaration.
Steptoe's International Trade team is closely monitoring the refund process. If you need support evaluating what these developments mean for your business, or support with filing a CIT complaint or CBP protest, our team is ready to help.
