By: Brian Walczyk, Compliance Manager, TradeInsights, LCB, CCS

Today, March 31, US CBP issued a progress update to the CIT on their development of new capability within ACE to handle IEEPA refunds.

CAPE is designed with four integrated components:

• Claim Portal; 85% complete, up from 73%
• Mass Processing; 60% complete, up from 45%
• Review and Liquidation/Reliquidation; 80% complete, no change
• Refund; 75% complete, up from 63%

No new order for an update has been issued at the time of this writing. An additional update may be requested by the CIT and would likely be on April 7 or April 14.

Importers should continue:

1. Confirm they have access to ACE
2. Set-up ACH Refund
3. Monitor IEEPA entries for liquidation and potential protest action
4. Audit entry data in preparation of CAPE declarations

Notes from 3/31 update:

• Mass Processing – Phase 1 to be limited to entries that are either unliquidated or liquidated and within the 90-day voluntary reliquidation window.

• Future Phases of CAPE will include expansion for entries considered final in liquidation and a myriad of other improvements/tools.

Phase 1:

• Will accept entries with liquidation status “suspended,” “extended,” or “under review.” It will not liquidate or reliquidate, but it will modify the entry appropriately so that in its normal course it will liquidate correctly.

• Warehouse and warehouse withdrawals will be accepted but will not liquidate or process the refund. It will be liquidated after all withdrawals have been made, and at that point the refund will be issued.

• Recon, drawback, entries covered by an open protest, entries not filed in ACE, and entries subject to AD/CVD which have liquidation instructions from the DOC will not be included in Phase 1.

• CBP will take up to 45 days from its acceptance of a CAPE declaration to review and liquidate validated entry summaries. CBP reserves the right to extend this window should compliance concerns necessitate further review.

On March 27 Judge Eaton did amend the suspended order to now include entries “for which liquidation is final shall be reliquidated without regard to IEEPA duties,” which has been a considerable concern for the Trade community. US CBP did acknowledge the amendment in its update, stating that Phase 1 will not include the ability to submit for entries considered final in liquidation, but a later Phase would.

The Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) functionality in ACE aims to streamline the processing of refunds related to IEEPA tariffs collected from February 2025 to February 2026.

The current development aims to have the Importer or Broker submit a list of data elements to CAPE via a CSV file, which will run through validation steps before ACE mass updates the entry to remove IEEPA duties. There will be a CBP validation step, as needed, between the removal of IEEPA duties and the liquidation/reliquidation process. Once all steps are complete it would send the information for processing the refund, for which the Importer will need an ACE account with ACE ACH Refund enabled.

With the case now before the CIT we will continue to watch for developments on the exact mechanisms the court will deem appropriate for seeking IEEPA tariff refunds. Please contact your V. Alexander account team, or you may also contact our Trade Compliance team at tradeinsights@valexander.com with any questions, and you can always follow us on our website www.valexander.com for updates on this and other topics.