CHICAGO, March 16, 2026 — Moving with court-ordered haste, the Trump Administration has drafted a detailed plan for dispersing more than $165 billion it collected under the protective tariffs that were struck down last month by the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a result of the ruling, Senior Judge Roger Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade was directed to ensure the White House came up quickly with a plan to get the collected money back to importers and brokers, including food-away-from-home (FAFH) suppliers. Eaton gave the Administration 45 days to have a reimbursement system in place.
The government said it needed more time, but heeded Eaton’s demand for quick action by presenting him with a four-part plan last Thursday for returning the funds. It is calling the set-up CAPE, for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries.
The arrangement addresses how to get refunds to the parties that directly paid the import surcharges. It stops short of saying how consumers of products with prices inflated by the tariffs, including downstream components of the FAFH industry, may be reimbursed what they paid.
But at least one class-action suit, filed against Costco, aims to force reimbursement recipients to share the refunds with customers.
The Administration’s proposal calls for instituting a four-step process, starting with the development of an online claims portal. Importers and brokers would submit a request for reimbursement of specific duties they paid. Each claim would be reviewed and validated.
The Administration revealed that construction of the portal is 70% complete.
Validated claims would then be subject to what the White House has termed mass processing. Automated systems would determine what duties a claimant would have paid if the illegal tariffs had not been in place.
The government said the infrascture to support that function is 40% complete.
The third process could be what the import business knows as liquidation, or determining the exact amount a party should have paid in import duties. Importers typically pay what amounts to an estimate of what they owe in surcharges. Liquidation is the trade’s term for rectifying the estimates with what should have been the actual charges.
The Administration said it is about 80% of the way toward being able to implement that stage.
The final phase will be the distribution of refunds, which pivots on the electronic transfers of funds. That mechanism is about 60% complete, the White House said.
The plan was formally submitted by Brandon Lord, Executive Director of Trade Programs for the Office of Trade, an operation of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
Judge Eaton has yet to publicly respond to the government’s proposed plan.
The significant progress reported on all four components of the plan suggests the Administration was anticipating the Supreme Court’s decision that President Donald Trump had exceeded his constitutional authority in setting the duties.
Trump had asserted that duties that sometimes exceeded 100% were necessary to close the United States’ trade deficit and jump-start domestic production of goods that are now imported.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in effect struck down the duties Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Executive Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. The White House immediately pivoted, invoking an older law, the Trade Act of 1974, which grants the president the power to set tariffs for 120 days on imports from nations that enjoy a very favorable balance of trade with the U.S. After 120 days, the tariffs expire unless Congress opts to renew the duties.
The Administration imposed an across-the-board tariff of 10% on top of any duties that were in place prior to the IEEPA tariffs being imposed.