Court Widens Path to Tariff Refunds

New York — A federal trade judge on 8 October opened a wider path for importers to recover money they paid under tariffs that the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled unlawful, certifying a class action meant to cover companies that have not yet filed their own refund claims.

Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade, the specialised court in New York that hears customs and trade cases, certified the class in Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States. The lawsuit concerns duties collected under President Donald Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 statute that lets a president restrict economic activity after declaring a national emergency. The Supreme Court ruled on 20 February 2026 that the law does not let a president impose tariffs.

What already went back

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been processing refunds through a tool called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, or CAPE. As of 2 October, Customs had accepted about $136.6 billion in potential and certified refunds for processing in CAPE, and about $126 billion in duties and interest had been sent to the Treasury for disbursement, a Customs official wrote in a 6 October court filing, Bloomberg Law reported. Eaton wrote that more than 75 percent of the $166 billion in unlawfully collected duties, plus interest, has now been refunded this way.

Transport Topics, citing Bloomberg, put the figure of fully processed refunds at almost $130 billion.

Where the stuck money is

Customs told the court it could not process refund requests for certain import entries that were more than 80 days past liquidation — the step when Customs finalises an entry and settles the duties owed. For those entries, Customs said importers had to sue individually at the trade court.

Eaton wrote that if CAPE stopped working today, "approximately $30 billion in unlawfully collected duties would remain on deposit in the Treasury." He said some importers have not used CAPE at all, and that those non-claimants are believed to be "overwhelmingly small importers" who find the cost or effort too high or do not know the program exists.

"Should further action not be taken, we are left with the prospect of the U.S. Department of the Treasury retaining billions of dollars of unlawfully collected duties, and tens of thousands of importers of record being denied the liquidation or the reliquidation of their entries," he wrote. Without those liquidations or reliquidations, he added, those importers would not receive the refunds they are owed.

Why a class action

A class action lets one or a few named plaintiffs sue on behalf of a large group of people or companies in the same legal position. Eaton's order certifies a class of all importers of record (the companies legally responsible for paying duties on goods) who paid the invalidated emergency tariffs between 1 February 2025 and 19 February 2026 and have not filed their own refund suits. More than 4,000 near-identical individual suits, involving about 7,000 plaintiffs, had already been filed by 7 October, he noted.

The Trump administration has pushed back on court efforts to order refunds for all importers at once, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling last year that limits "universal" injunctions — court orders that bind the government as to everyone, not just the parties in the case. Class certification is a different tool: once a class is certified, a court order can still reach a defined group of similarly situated importers.

"Today, the court is certifying a class in the hope, and expectation, that this certification will lead to the liquidation or reliquidation of all of the entries on which the unlawful IEEPA duties were imposed, and the refund of those duties to the importers of record that paid them," Eaton wrote.

What the lawyers said

Class counsel — Lawrence Friedman of Barnes, Richardson & Colburn and Elizabeth Cabraser and Nicholas Diamand of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein — called the certification "a vital step toward informing and empowering all importers, not just those with the means to file suit, to recover illegally imposed IEEPA duties."

Customs did not immediately comment, Bloomberg Law reported.

What happens next

Certification is not itself a cheque. The class still has to win on the relief it seeks — liquidation or reliquidation of the covered entries and payment of the refunds. The order does expand who can benefit from one lawsuit instead of tens of thousands of separate filings. Importers who already sued on their own stay outside the class.