IEEPA Refund Status, September 2026: $106.6B Paid, Phase 3 Delayed, $1.7B Stuck on ACH, and the September 15 AD/CVD Hearing

IEEPA Refund Status, September 2026: $106.6B Paid, Phase 3 Delayed, $1.7B Stuck on ACH, and the September 15 AD/CVD Hearing

CBP's most recent status report to the Court of International Trade, filed August 25, 2026, is the clearest picture yet of where the IEEPA refund program actually is — and where it has stalled. The headline numbers are large. The fine print is where importers should be looking.

This is the September status check. It updates our August read on Phase 2 and Phase 3, and it is organized the way the money is: by which population your entries fall into, what is moving for that population, and what is not.

The Numbers as of August 21

Per CBP's filing, as of 3 p.m. ET on August 21, 2026:

- 26.4 million entries carrying IEEPA duties had been accepted for processing through CAPE (the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system). - Those entries represent approximately $132.5 billion in potential and certified refunds. - Approximately $106.6 billion in duties and interest had been completed, certified by CBP, and transmitted to Treasury for disbursement. - 272,029 CAPE declarations had been submitted; 191,494 passed file-level validation. - 18.76 million entries had been liquidated or reliquidated without IEEPA duties. - 2.3 million reconciliation-flagged entries had been successfully filed through the Phase 2 functionality that opened June 29.

For scale: the total IEEPA pool was estimated in the spring at roughly $166 billion across some 53 million entries. Two-thirds of the dollars are now certified. The remaining third is disproportionately concentrated in the populations described below — the ones with a procedural problem rather than a filing problem.

If you have not sized your own exposure, the tariff refund calculator will give you a first-pass number by entry value and IEEPA rate before you pull line-level data from ACE.

Phase 3 Is Delayed, With No New Date

The most consequential line in the August 25 filing is the one about Phase 3.

CAPE Phase 3 is the mechanism for finally liquidated entries — entries that liquidated more than 180 days ago, past the protest window, where the only path to a refund is a court-ordered reliquidation. The CIT's July 15 order directed CBP to reliquidate those entries for plaintiffs across the roughly 3,700 IEEPA cases on its docket, and CBP had signaled a Phase 3 deployment around August 20.

That deployment did not happen. CBP told the court that Phase 3 is temporarily delayed while the agency builds additional system validations. The stated reasons are worth reading closely, because they explain why this population is technically harder than Phases 1 and 2:

1. Reliquidation must strip IEEPA duties without touching anything else. A finally liquidated entry may carry Section 232, Section 301, AD/CVD, MPF, and HMF alongside the IEEPA line. CBP wants controls that guarantee the reliquidation adjusts only the IEEPA amount and leaves every other duty, fee, and interest calculation exactly as it liquidated. 2. Some original entries reported IEEPA duties incorrectly. Where the Chapter 99 IEEPA line was misreported at entry — wrong subheading, wrong amount, IEEPA duty rolled into another line — a mechanical reversal would refund the wrong number. CBP says the new validations are meant to catch those cases.

CBP has not announced a new deployment date. The delay does not affect Phases 1 and 2, which remain open and are processing normally.

What this means in practice: if your entries are finally liquidated, you have a CIT case, and you were expecting reliquidation refunds in September, that timeline is now open-ended. If your entries are finally liquidated and you do not have a CIT case, nothing changed — you were not in Phase 3 to begin with, and the options we walked through in August still apply.

$1.7 Billion Is Certified and Not Moving — Because of Bank Details

Buried in the same filing: 22,170 refunds totaling approximately $1.7 billion have been certified by CBP but not transmitted to Treasury, because the importer of record has not supplied ACH banking information.

This is the same failure mode we flagged in May, when roughly 1,880 refund batches were stuck at Treasury for the same reason. The number has grown by more than an order of magnitude as the program scaled. The fix has not changed: the importer of record, or its designee on a CBP Form 4811, has to provide ACH refund information through the ACE Refund Portal (or the ACH Refund enrollment process) before the money moves. Nobody at CBP will chase you for it.

If you filed a CAPE declaration more than six weeks ago and have not seen a deposit, this is the first thing to check. Log into ACE, confirm the refund is showing as certified, and confirm the ACH profile on file is current and belongs to the IOR — not the broker, not a forwarder, not a prior bank.

Phase 2: Reconciliation Entries Are Flowing

Phase 2 opened June 29 for entries flagged for reconciliation where no Type 09 reconciliation entry has yet been filed. Eligible entries are generally those that remain unliquidated or liquidated within the preceding 80 days. As of August 21, 2.3 million such entries had been filed through CAPE and set for processing.

Nothing structural changed here in August. If you have reconciliation-flagged entries and have not filed, the CAPE declaration checklist applies, and the top validation failures are still the top validation failures. The one practical caution: the 80-day post-liquidation window is a moving target. An entry that qualified in July may have aged out by September. Pull liquidation dates before you build the file.

The AD/CVD Population Finally Gets a Hearing — September 15

The population with the least progress to date is importers whose IEEPA-duty entries are also subject to antidumping or countervailing duty proceedings. Those entries have their liquidation suspended by statute until the AD/CVD administrative review concludes — which can take years. CAPE refunds IEEPA duties through liquidation or reliquidation, so an entry that cannot liquidate cannot be refunded through CAPE, no matter how clear the IEEPA claim is.

In March, Judge Richard Eaton — who is managing every IEEPA refund matter at the CIT through the *Atmus Filtration* case — declined to lift the stay on six cases that asked the court to untether IEEPA refunds from liquidation status for exactly this reason. The court's position through the summer has been that CAPE is the process, and it works through liquidation.

That changes, at least procedurally, this month. A motion filed on behalf of importers Aditya Birla Chemicals and Pack Perfect asks the court to enter an order stating that all AD/CVD entries that paid IEEPA duties must ultimately be refunded — in other words, to establish the entitlement now and work out the mechanism later, rather than leaving the refund contingent on liquidation events years away. The CIT has scheduled oral argument for September 15, 2026.

What is at stake: for an importer of, say, steel or chemical products subject to a live AD/CVD order, IEEPA duties paid in 2025 might not otherwise be refundable until the relevant administrative review liquidates the entries in 2027 or 2028, with interest accruing on the government's side the whole time. An order confirming entitlement would not put cash in anyone's account on September 16, but it would settle the legal question, and it would give CBP a basis to build a process for this population rather than waiting for liquidation.

If your entries fall here, two things this week: confirm with counsel whether your case is stayed and whether the September 15 outcome will bind you or merely inform you, and make sure your line-level IEEPA duty amounts on the AD/CVD entries are documented now. Whatever mechanism follows, it will need the number.

Section 122 Litigation Is Still Alive at the Federal Circuit

A separate track, and a reminder that the refund story is not only about IEEPA: a group of 24 states filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in early September arguing that the CIT was wrong to hold that 23 of them lacked standing to challenge the Section 122 tariffs. Section 122 itself expired at 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2026 — the duties are no longer being collected — but the question of whether importers who paid the 10%/15% surcharge can recover it runs through this appeal. That is a longer story; for now, importers who paid Section 122 duties should be preserving protest rights on the entries that are still within the 180-day window rather than waiting on the states.

Where Your Entries Stand: A September Decision Table

Unliquidated, or liquidated within the last 180 days, no reconciliation flag. Phase 1. Still open. File a CAPE declaration if you have not; check ACH details if you have.

Flagged for reconciliation, no Type 09 filed, liquidated within 80 days or unliquidated. Phase 2. Open and processing. Watch the 80-day window.

Finally liquidated, and you filed at the CIT. Phase 3. Delayed, no date. Nothing to file until CBP deploys; confirm your case is on the July 15 reliquidation order.

Finally liquidated, no CIT case. No CAPE path. The realistic options remain a late-filed suit (with the statute-of-limitations analysis that entails) or a protest if any entries are still inside the window. Talk to counsel; the August article covers the decision.

Any of the above, but the entry also has AD/CVD. Liquidation suspended; CAPE cannot process. Watch September 15.

Declaration filed, refund certified, no deposit. Check the ACH profile in ACE before doing anything else. You may be one of the 22,170.

Getting the Data Right Before the Next Filing Window

Every one of these paths turns on line-level duty amounts by entry and by Chapter 99 subheading, matched to liquidation dates that live in ACE and not in most accounting systems. The Phase 3 delay is, at bottom, CBP discovering that a meaningful share of original entries reported IEEPA duties incorrectly — which means a meaningful share of importers' own records are wrong too.

Importers reconciling thousands of entries against supplier invoices and broker entry summaries often run the classification and duty math per line through software such as Zonos before their broker builds a declaration or their counsel builds a refund claim. (Disclosure: this is an affiliate link — FreightFigures may earn a commission if you sign up, at no additional cost to you. See our full affiliate disclosure.) For anything headed to the CIT, the reconciliation should be reviewed by customs counsel, not automated.

For the full background on the refund program from the Supreme Court decision forward, see the IEEPA tariff refund guide.

FAQ

How much has CBP actually paid out in IEEPA refunds? As of August 21, 2026, approximately $106.6 billion in duties and interest had been certified by CBP and sent to Treasury for disbursement, out of roughly $132.5 billion accepted into CAPE across 26.4 million entries.

When will CAPE Phase 3 launch? CBP has not announced a date. On August 25 it told the Court of International Trade that Phase 3 is temporarily delayed while it builds additional validations to ensure reliquidation of finally liquidated entries adjusts only the IEEPA duties and handles entries where IEEPA duties were originally misreported.

My refund shows as certified but nothing has been deposited. Why? Most likely missing or outdated ACH information. CBP reported 22,170 refunds worth about $1.7 billion held for this reason. The importer of record or its Form 4811 designee must supply current bank details before Treasury can transmit.

What is the September 15 CIT hearing about? Oral argument on a motion by importers Aditya Birla Chemicals and Pack Perfect asking the court to order that all antidumping/countervailing duty entries that paid IEEPA tariffs must ultimately be refunded. Those entries cannot liquidate while AD/CVD proceedings are pending, so CAPE currently cannot refund them.

Does the Phase 3 delay affect Phase 1 or Phase 2 filings? No. CBP confirmed that existing CAPE functionality under Phases 1 and 2 remains fully operational.

Related Tools

Related Articles