Roughly one in seven importers who applied for tariff refunds through the federal government’s new online portal have been turned down, raising early questions about a system that was built to streamline billions of dollars in disputed trade duties.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has denied 15% of refund entries submitted through its Centralized Automated Processing for Entries system, known as CAPE, according to Bloomberg, which cited agency officials briefed on the data. The rejections arrive at a fraught moment: thousands of American businesses are waiting to recover duties they paid on goods swept up in tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a statute the Trump administration invoked to levy broad import charges that multiple federal courts are now scrutinizing.
What CAPE is and why it matters
CAPE is CBP’s dedicated digital portal for processing refund claims tied to IEEPA tariffs. The agency designed it to replace a slow patchwork of manual filings and case-by-case reviews, offering importers a standardized, rules-based path to recovering overpaid duties.
In April 2026, CBP formally notified the U.S. Court of International Trade that guidance on CAPE and IEEPA refunds was live on its website. The court acknowledged that notification in its proceedings, creating a legal record that could matter if importers later argue they were not given adequate instructions. CBP’s own IEEPA duty refunds page now details eligibility rules, required documents, and step-by-step filing instructions.
For importers, the portal was overdue good news. IEEPA tariffs have landed on a wide range of consumer and industrial goods, from electronics components to building materials, and many companies had booked the duties as costs they expected to recover once the refund mechanism went live. A 15% rejection rate complicates that math.
Why claims are being denied
CBP has not published a breakdown of denial reasons. Licensed customs brokers and trade attorneys who have reviewed rejected filings point to several recurring problems: incomplete paperwork, mismatches between the entry data importers submitted and the criteria CBP coded into CAPE, and filings that fall outside eligible tariff categories or covered time windows.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America, a trade group representing roughly 800 brokerage firms, has urged CBP to issue detailed denial codes so filers can distinguish a fixable clerical error from a fundamental eligibility problem. That distinction carries real financial weight. A missing commercial invoice can be corrected and resubmitted within days. A claim that CBP considers categorically ineligible may require a formal protest under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 or a challenge before the Court of International Trade, a process that can stretch for months and cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Major gaps in the public record
The 15% figure, while striking, floats without much context. CBP has not disclosed how many total claims the portal has processed, so there is no way to gauge whether the denial rate reflects a few hundred entries or tens of thousands. The dollar value at stake is similarly undisclosed.
For individual companies, the stakes are concrete. A mid-size electronics distributor that paid $2 million in IEEPA duties and gets denied faces an immediate budget hole. Across the entire import sector, trade attorneys estimate the aggregate refund pool could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, though no official tally exists.
Other critical details remain missing:
- Appeal rights: CBP’s published guidance walks importers through filing a claim but does not clearly explain what happens after a denial. Whether rejected filers can correct and resubmit, request administrative reconsideration, or must proceed directly to court is not addressed in current public documentation.
- Processing timelines: Even importers whose claims are approved have no public benchmark for how long payment takes. CBP has not committed to a target turnaround, leaving businesses unable to plan around the cash flow.
- Category patterns: No public data shows whether certain product types, countries of origin, or filing periods are generating higher denial rates. Without that information, importers cannot assess whether their own claims face elevated risk.
Active litigation adds another layer of uncertainty
The use of IEEPA to impose tariffs is itself legally contested. Several lawsuits filed in the Court of International Trade have challenged whether the statute, which grants the president emergency economic powers during national emergencies, was ever intended to authorize broad import duties on commercial goods. The court’s public docket shows a steady stream of related filings through spring 2026, and at least one case has advanced to the briefing stage on the government’s authority to use IEEPA for trade enforcement.
That legal uncertainty cuts both ways for importers. If courts ultimately rule that certain IEEPA tariffs were unlawfully imposed, the universe of refund-eligible entries could expand well beyond what CAPE currently covers. If the tariffs are upheld, some refund categories could narrow or vanish. Either outcome would reshape the rules while claims are still being processed.
For context, the CAPE denial rate already exceeds what importers experienced under the Section 301 tariff exclusion process during the first Trump administration, where CBP’s rejection rates on properly filed exclusion claims generally ran in the single digits, according to trade practitioners who worked both systems.
What comes next for businesses with money on the line
The next several weeks will reveal whether the 15% rejection rate is a launch-phase growing pain or a sign of deeper structural problems with the portal. Trade groups, including the NCBFAA and the American Association of Exporters and Importers, have formally asked CBP to publish denial-reason data and commit to processing benchmarks. The agency has said it will continue updating its guidance as CAPE matures, but has not set a timeline for those updates.
Importers filing through CAPE should document every submission in detail, retain copies of all supporting commercial records, and consult a licensed customs broker or trade attorney before treating any denial as final. Given the active litigation surrounding IEEPA tariffs, even claims that appear categorically ineligible today could become viable if the legal landscape shifts.
Whether CBP can bring transparency to the process fast enough to match importer frustration is an open question. If it cannot, the Court of International Trade may end up answering it.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
