How to Get a Refund for Trump Tariffs: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you imported goods from China, Vietnam, or other countries over the past year, you likely paid steep tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Those tariffs have now been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court—which means you may be entitled to a refund of every dollar in IEEPA duties you paid.

But Trump tariff refunds won’t just show up in your account. Getting your IEEPA tariff money back requires real preparation, hard deadlines, and organized documentation. This guide is for small and medium-sized importers who need a clear, practical roadmap to pursue their IEEPA tariff refund.

Are You Eligible for a Trump Tariff Refund?

If you were the importer of record on entries that were assessed duties under IEEPA—the legal authority the Trump Administration used to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, “reciprocal” tariffs, and drug-trafficking tariffs—you are potentially eligible for a refund. The Supreme Court’s February 2026 decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump ruled that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs, making every dollar collected under that authority subject to refund.

This applies broadly. Whether you imported from China, Southeast Asia, Europe, or elsewhere, if your entries were hit with IEEPA duties, you have a potential claim. The question isn’t whether you’re owed money—it’s whether you take the right steps to get it back.

Step 1: Set Up Your ACE Portal Account

Your customs data lives in ACE (Automated Commercial Environment), CBP’s system of record for all import transactions. If you’ve been relying on your customs broker to handle everything and don’t have direct access, fix that now. You need to see your own entry summaries, duty payments, and liquidation status firsthand.

Your broker can help you get portal access, but don’t wait. Importers who can’t see their own data can’t track their own deadlines—and in the IEEPA refund process, missed deadlines mean forfeited money.

Step 2: Download Your Entry Data and Get It Into One Place

Once you’re in ACE, pull reports for every entry on which IEEPA tariffs were assessed. The key data points you need are entry numbers, entry dates, duty types and amounts, countries of origin, HTS classifications, and liquidation status.

Here’s the challenge: ACE will give you the raw data, but it won’t organize it around refund deadlines or tell you which entries are ready for a protest filing. That’s why importers pursuing Trump tariff refunds are turning to IEEPA management dashboards like CustomsGenius—platforms that let you upload your ACE data and instantly map every entry against its critical deadlines. For companies juggling dozens or hundreds of entries across multiple countries of origin, this kind of centralized tracking is essential.

Step 3: Understand and Track Your IEEPA Refund Deadlines

The timeline for recovering IEEPA tariffs is driven by a series of hard, entry-specific deadlines. If you’re asking “how do I get a refund for Trump tariffs,” understanding these dates is the most important thing you can do.

Entries become final (liquidate) roughly 314 days after the entry date. The first IEEPA-tariffed entries started liquidating around mid-December 2025, and more are liquidating every week. Once an entry liquidates, you have exactly 180 days to file a protest challenging the IEEPA duties. If you request accelerated disposition of that protest and CBP doesn’t act within 30 days, the protest is automatically deemed denied—triggering another 180-day window to file suit in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT).

Every entry runs on its own clock. If you imported from China in early 2025, some of your entries may already be liquidated and the protest deadline could be approaching. A tracking tool like CustomsGenius flags these dates automatically so nothing falls through the cracks.

Step 4: Build Your Protest Packets Before the Deadline Hits

Filing a protest to recover IEEPA tariffs isn’t just paperwork—it needs to be backed by solid evidence. For each entry, you’ll want your CF 7501 entry summary, commercial invoices, packing slips, bills of lading, and documentation of exactly what IEEPA duties were assessed and paid.

Don’t wait until a deadline is weeks away to start hunting for these documents. Go through your entries now, identify where your records are complete and where there are gaps, and fill those gaps while you still have time. If you’ve uploaded your data to a platform like CustomsGenius, you can track document completeness per entry and see at a glance which protest packets are ready to file and which need more work.

And a critical reminder: do not rely solely on being able to download records from ACE or through the Automated Broker Interface (ABI) later. Keep your own backup copies of everything. Systems go down, data gets archived, and you don’t want your Trump tariff refund to depend on whether a government portal is cooperating.

Step 5: Decide Whether to File a Lawsuit in CIT

For many importers, especially those who imported heavily from China and paid significant IEEPA duties, the Customs protest process alone may not be enough. The protest system was not designed to handle refunds at this scale, and the government has indicated that the Court of International Trade will be the primary venue for resolving IEEPA refund claims. Filing suit in CIT may be the most direct and reliable path to actually getting your money back.

Whether it makes sense for your business depends on how much you’re owed, how strong your documentation is, and whether the cost of litigation is justified by the potential recovery. But this decision has a timeline attached to it—every liquidated entry is already counting down. Talk to a trade attorney sooner rather than later and make this assessment part of your overall refund strategy.

Don’t Wait—Importers Who Act First Get Paid First

The Supreme Court has ruled that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs were unlawful. If you paid them, you’re owed a refund. But the government isn’t going to hand that money back automatically. Importers who get organized now—who have their data centralized, their deadlines tracked, and their evidence assembled—will be first in line when refunds start moving.

Set up your ACE access. Get your entry data into a management platform like CustomsGenius. Start building your protest packets. And make a decision about CIT litigation before the deadlines decide for you.

The importers who move early on their IEEPA tariff refund claims will be the ones who recover the most, the fastest.