On July 17, 2026, U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) Senior Judge Richard Eaton, issued an order, which was made available today, directing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to “reliquidate, without regard to IEEPA [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] duties, any and all of Plaintiffs’ entries that have been liquidated for more than 80 days and on which Plaintiffs made estimated deposits pursuant to IEEPA.” This order follows the recent transfer to Judge Eaton’s docket of more than 3,700 cases filed with the CIT seeking refunds of amounts deposited as IEEPA duties ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. While the U.S. government through CBP voluntarily established the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system for processing IEEPA tariff refunds, the government’s position had consistently been that a court order directing the reliquidation of entries whose liquidation had become final would be necessary to provide authority to reliquidate these “finally liquidated” entries – i.e., entries that have been liquidated for more than 90 days and thus beyond the period for reliquidation set out in 19 U.S.C. § 1501. According to Judge Eaton’s July 17 order, this “order provides the Government with that legal authority.” This order only applies to companies that have filed cases seeking IEEPA tariff refunds at the CIT.
This order directs reliquidation of all entries that have been liquidated for more than 80 days, which includes reliquidation of finally liquidated entries and entries that may become final during the CAPE process. The order states that to successfully submit a CAPE declaration for finally liquidated entries, plaintiffs must first submit to CBP certain information, including their importer of record identification number(s). CBP will issue instructions describing how to make this submission to plaintiffs’ counsel, and once received and followed, plaintiffs may submit a CAPE declaration. CBP is next required to file a report on the progress of the CAPE for these “Phase 3” entries on August 4, 2026.
In addition to this development, Judge Eaton announced that the new lead case regarding IEEPA tariff refunds is Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States of America (1:26-cv-01088). Plaintiff in the previous lead case, Euro-Notions Florida, Inc., had previously announced its intention to voluntarily dismiss its case and subsequently did so. See CIT Order dated July 15, 2026.
For additional information on the CBP IEEPA tariff refund phases, see SmarTrade blog posts dated June 25, 2026, June 15, 2026, April 10, 2026, and March 30, 2026.