When U.S. Customs and Border Protection flipped the switch on its new tariff refund portal on April 20, 2026, the largest importers in the country were ready. Walmart, Target, and Nike each operate dedicated trade-compliance teams with direct electronic links to CBP’s filing systems. They had lawyers on standby, entry data organized, and claims queued before most small importers knew the portal existed.
On the other side of that divide: more than 330,000 smaller businesses that collectively paid roughly $166 billion in the same tariffs and now face a processing backlog that CBP itself estimates would require approximately 4.4 million labor hours to clear.
The refunds trace back to a ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which found that tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) exceeded presidential authority. Every importer that paid those duties is legally entitled to seek reimbursement. But the gap between having a legal right and having cash back in hand is growing wider by the week.
A portal built for speed, used by those who already had it
CBP built a purpose-designed system called CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) to handle the crush of refund requests. According to an Associated Press report summarizing CBP’s IEEPA duty refund guidance, only the importer of record or a licensed customs broker may submit claims through the CAPE/ACE portal. Eligibility in this first phase is limited to entries that remain within a specified liquidation window, meaning companies whose shipments have not yet been finalized in CBP’s system can file right away.
That structure gives high-volume importers a built-in head start. Walmart, Target, and Nike move enormous quantities of goods through U.S. ports every week, generating a constant stream of unliquidated entries. All three have publicly flagged significant tariff costs in recent earnings calls and SEC filings. Walmart told investors earlier this year that tariffs were putting upward pressure on prices across categories. Nike has repeatedly cited duties on Chinese-manufactured footwear and apparel as a material expense. Target’s CFO pointed to tariff uncertainty as a drag on margin guidance.
These companies also maintain the exact infrastructure CAPE was designed to interface with: in-house customs teams, direct connections to CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment, and the ability to transmit bulk claims electronically. No public CBP record or SEC filing reviewed for this article confirms that any of these retailers have received refund payments as of late May 2026. But their scale, compliance resources, and deep pools of unliquidated entries position them squarely at the front of the line. The system does not require them to wait, and nothing in its design slows them down.
The math behind the bottleneck
In a sworn declaration filed with the Court of International Trade, CBP official Brandon Lord stated that as of March 4, 2026, more than 330,000 importers had made over 53 million entries and paid approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs, according to the AP’s summary of the declaration. Lord estimated that processing all those refunds under existing systems would consume roughly 4.4 million labor hours.
Run that number through a simple staffing scenario, and the scale becomes concrete. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation by this publication: if CBP assigned 1,000 full-time employees exclusively to refund processing at roughly 2,000 working hours per employee per year, the work would still take more than two years. That is precisely why the agency built CAPE rather than routing claims through legacy systems. The portal is designed to centralize filings, apply consistent eligibility checks, and automate portions of the review.
But automation only helps filers who can feed it clean, structured data. Many of the 330,000 affected importers are small and midsize businesses that rely on outside customs brokers or basic spreadsheets to track shipments. Reconstructing years of entry records in the format CAPE requires is a serious burden for a company that does not have a compliance department. The system assumes a level of digital readiness that is far from universal across American importers.
“We have clients who paid six figures in IEEPA duties and cannot even locate the original entry summaries CBP needs to process the claim,” said Richard Wortman, a licensed customs broker based in Los Angeles who works primarily with small and midsize importers. “The big retailers have systems that spit this data out on demand. My clients are digging through email attachments from 2024.”
Phased eligibility, open-ended timelines
CBP’s phased rollout adds another obstacle. The agency has not published what share of the 53 million-plus entries fall inside the initial liquidation window versus how many are locked behind future phases. A separate AP account of the rollout noted the phased eligibility rules but did not include specific breakdowns. That gap makes it impossible for smaller importers to calculate how much of their money is actually accessible right now, or when the rest might become available.
Processing timelines are equally opaque. Lord’s 4.4 million labor-hour figure describes the total workload, not the pace at which CBP intends to move through it. No court filing or agency statement reviewed for this article sets a target date for completing all refunds. Without a published service standard, importers are left estimating based on past experience with duty drawback and other complex refund programs, which have historically stretched into months or years.
Then there is the cost of filing itself. CBP’s guidance requires importers to certify the accuracy of their claims but does not detail how mistakes discovered after payment will be handled, or how quickly denied claims can be appealed. For a small business owner weighing whether to hire a licensed customs broker to prepare a filing, the prospect of a drawn-out dispute process may be enough to deter borderline claims altogether, effectively leaving money on the table.
No one is tracking who gets paid first
As of late May 2026, CBP has not released registration counts, approval rates, or payment totals broken down by company size, sector, or geography. Without that data, no one outside the agency can say with certainty how refund dollars are flowing. What the public record does support is a structural observation: the legal right to these refunds is shared broadly across 330,000 importers, but the practical ability to capture the money is not.
CAPE, as currently designed, rewards speed, scale, and digital sophistication. Companies that have all three are filing now. Companies that lack any one of them are waiting, with no official timeline for how long.
Small importers face a system that was not built for them
Whether subsequent portal phases, additional CBP staffing, or congressional pressure can close that gap remains an open question. Several trade groups, including the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America, have urged CBP to simplify filing requirements for smaller importers, though no formal policy changes have been announced. For now, the refund system built to correct an unconstitutional tariff is following a pattern that will surprise no one who has watched trade policy play out in practice: the companies with the most resources are positioned to get paid first, and everyone else joins the queue.
