With the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating the Trump administration’s tariff policies, the Court of International Trade may be called upon to require the executive branch to return billions of dollars collected in duties.
The decision found that President Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to levy tariffs. In response, the president issued new duties under different trade laws and stated that tariff refunds will be “in court for the next five years.”
Zack Hadzismajlovic, head of McCarter English’s Global Trade, CFIUS and Export Controls practice, spoke with the New York Law Journal and noted that the refunds can proceed through the administrative rather than court process.
There is hope, Zack said, that refunds could be processed through CBP’s ACE Secure Data Portal. But despite the relative ease of a CBP-administered system, administering refunds at this scale would be overwhelming.