The Weekly Brief for
U.S. Importers

CBP's latest court declaration confirms $86.3 billion repaid to importers as of July 10, 2026, including statutory interest, with $121.75 billion now accepted for processing — up from roughly $90 billion in mid-June. June alone accounted for $49.1 billion in payouts, more than double the $23.6 billion the government collected in new tariff revenue over the same period.

Of the full $166 billion IEEPA pool, roughly $79.7 billion remains outstanding. At June's pace, most of the currently-accepted claims should clear within the next couple of months — though thousands of approved refunds remain stuck at Treasury on nothing more than missing ACH banking information, and a separate pool of entries failed validation checks that are correctable with a resubmitted CAPE Declaration.

CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner Susan Thomas confirmed at the June 9 CIT hearing that CAPE Phase 3 programming will be ready by the end of July 2026, covering finally liquidated entries — the category Phases 1 and 2 cannot touch. As of this edition, that timeline has not slipped.

DOJ's position, reiterated at the June 9 hearing and in its Federal Circuit appeal, remains that Phase 3 refunds will be processed only for importers who filed individual Section 1581(i) lawsuits at the CIT — roughly 4,000 of 330,000 total importers. The finally liquidated entry category covers an estimated $11.4–$30 billion depending on whose analysis you use (Cato Institute vs. Foley & Lardner / Holland & Knight). If you haven't filed at the CIT and are considering it, the window to act is now — the two-year statute of limitations clock began ticking in early 2025.

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 hard-expires at 12:01 AM EDT on July 24, 2026 — six days from today. The statute caps the emergency surcharge at 150 days and 15% maximum; Congress cannot extend it without a new vote, and the President cannot extend it by executive action alone. No Congressional extension bill has advanced.

The broader replacement — USTR's proposed Section 301 duties of 10–12.5% on 60 countries from the forced-labor investigation — is still not finalized as of this edition, though finalization is expected within days of the July 24 deadline. Brazil is the exception: its 25% Section 301 rate is already confirmed, effective July 22, ahead of the general rule.

Separately: Pharma Section 232 takes effect July 31, 2026. Section 122 duties remain entirely separate from IEEPA duties and are not part of the CAPE refund process; keep Section 122 payment records as a distinct line item.

The Cato Institute’s June 29 analysis of CBP’s CIT filing found that CBP had approved refunds covering approximately 60% of its total refund obligation — representing only 30% of all import entries on which IEEPA tariffs were paid. Translation: approved refunds are concentrated in high-value entries from large importers, a pattern CIT Judge Eaton himself noted at the June 9 hearing.

Small and mid-size importers — with lower per-entry values but often steeper proportional duty exposure — remain disproportionately in the queue. With overall repayment now past $86 billion, the gap has narrowed in dollar terms, but nothing in CBP's process changes who gets processed first: filer volume and validation speed, not entry size or urgency of need.