The Trump administration has officially launched the tariff refund process

(Washington News) The Trump administration of the United States has initiated the process of refunding illegal tariffs, and has begun to return the tariffs and interest that importers have already paid.

On February 20th, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that President Trump's implementation of global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) was an act of exceeding his authority.

The relevant tax refund process and declaration system (CAPE) is scheduled to be launched on Monday (April 20th) in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States. The plan is to return up to 166 billion US dollars in illegal tariffs.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is in charge of managing this system, said that importers and brokers can apply for refunds through an online website starting from 8 a.m. on Monday. If the claims are approved, the refunds will be issued within 60 to 90 days.

The data shows that as of April 9th, among the importers eligible for tax refunds, only approximately 56,500 had completed the registration for electronic payment required for submitting applications, and the total amount of tax refunds including interest reached 127 billion US dollars.

However, not all of these importers meet the rebate criteria for the first phase of the rebate system, as this phase only processes customs declarations where the tariffs have been estimated but not yet finalized, or those that were submitted within 80 days from the date of receiving the final settlement statement.