Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday, March 6, told the Court of International Trade (CIT) in a filing that it was not prepared to process the court-ordered IEEPA tariff refunds, but could have ACE programmed to do so in the next 45 days, which CIT Judge Richard Eaton acknowledged later in the day with a suspension order.

“[W]ith respect to any and all unliquidated entries that were entered subject to the IEEPA duties, U.S. Customs and Border Protection [must] liquidate those entries without regard to the IEEPA duties,” and that “[a]ny liquidated entries for which liquidation is not final shall be reliquidated without regard to IEEPA duties,” the agency filing signed by Brandon Lord, Executive Director for the CBP Office of Trade.

“CBP is confident that it can develop and implement new ACE functionality that will streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments on an importer basis, rather than issuing 53,173,939 separate entry-specific refunds with multiple payments going to the same importer,” Lord added.

This new functionality would, according to CBP, help save time in processing refunds. As the declaration states, “though operational, legal, and technical considerations may require alterations or modifications, CBP anticipates that the process will involve the following steps:

• The importer files a declaration in ACE that includes a list of entries on which IEEPA duties were paid.

• ACE runs a series of validations on each entry within the declaration and automatically re-calculates the duty owed without the IEEPA tariffs (with applicable interest).

• CBP verifies the declaration and processes refunds as soon as practicable.

• ACE automatically finalizes (liquidates or reliquidates) the entries.

• ACE automatically aggregates the refunds with interest by importer and liquidation date.

• CBP certifies the refunds.

• The Department of the Treasury issues IEEPA refunds electronically.”

The declaration from CBP implies that this process might take months or more to complete the refunds to all affected importers.

The CIT on March 4 issued an order instructing CBP to liquidate unliquidated import entries without regard to IEEPA duties and to reliquidate any entries that have been liquidated but are not yet final.