US Tariffs: Can you get your money back?

Krishna: Welcome to The Insight in 15. I’m Krishna Grenville-Goble and today I’m joined by Jenna Glass, Director in our Trade and Customs Team at KPMG UK. Jenna was actually our first guest on The Insight in 15 last year, so it’s great to have you back Jenna. 

We’ve got 15 minutes so we’re going to dive straight in. At the end of February, the US Supreme Court ruled that President Trump didn’t have the authority to impose tariffs. So where does that leave us now? 

Jenna: Yeah. So before I answer that question, I just kind of want to take you back and remind everyone where we’ve been over the last year. So April 2nd, 2025, the president came out, Liberation Day. I don’t know if you remember the big poster with all the countries on it and the different percentages for tariffs. 

All of those were imposed under this IEEPA authority. As soon as May ’25 that was challenged in court, specifically the Court of International Trade. And they ruled that the president does not have the authority under IEEPA to impose these tariffs. 

Fast forward to August, where it was challenged, Court of Appeals agreed the president does not have the authority. Now we are in February 2026, where the Supreme Court has finally issued their ruling. And they also agree, six to three majority rule, that the president does not have the authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA. 

The issue is that the government has been collecting money since Liberation Day on all of these products. So there’s a real big question of what happens now and how companies can potentially get the money back. 

Krishna: So Jenna, does this impact all of the tariffs?

Jenna: It does not. But it does impact a large majority of what companies have been struggling with over the last 10 or so months. So there are still tariffs that remain in place that apply to industry or sector specific goods like aluminium, copper, steel, automotives, automotive parts.  

Recently, additional tariffs came out on certain semiconductors. So there’s still a great deal of industry or sector specific tariffs.

They’re called 232, they’re authorised under section 232. And then there’s some country specific tariffs under section 301 authority. And currently, there’s only one country that has active 301 tariffs against it, and that is China. 

Krishna: Where are we now? Have tariffs been turned off?

Jenna: So these retaliatory IEEPA tariffs, yes, have been turned off. It took them a while. The ruling came out on February 20th. They did not formally shut them off until February 24th, but yes, they are off. In its place, on the same day, February 24th, the president issued a proclamation of a 10% global tariff for all countries everywhere. So that is new. We got rid of the IEEPA retaliatory tariffs. Now we have a global 10% tariff. 

There are some rumours that he’s mentioned several times that he wants it to be 15%, but that is not official as of today. This section 122 authority to impose the global tariff is only valid for 150 days. So that brings us to 24th of July 2026, if it’s not extended or if there’s not a new proclamation in place by then.

Krishna: So what happens next? Can the US government appeal on some of the decisions made on tariffs? 

Jenna: So with respect to these IEEPA tariffs, the ones that the Supreme Court ruled down, the government can no longer appeal the decision from the Supreme Court. So that’s been decided. Now that opens up the administration to look for other more established ways to impose additional tariffs.

The first example being that section 122, 10% global tariff. There’s also those sector or industry-based tariffs that I mentioned, the section 232 that are on aluminium, steel, copper. More investigations can be initiated now under that authority. And then similar to the country specific investigations, we currently have a 301 duty on the country of China. Recently the administration announced additional countries that they will be investigating to see if they pose a threat to US industry. 

So while the administration cannot appeal the existing decisions, it just is forcing them to find a different way to impose tariffs.

Krishna: So what would that mean for UK’s 10% tariff deals? And what would that also mean for countries that struck different tariff deals? 

Jenna: Unfortunately, it is unclear at this time what that means for those deals. These countries spent months and months negotiating a favourable deal in light of the retaliatory tariff amounts. And now it’s kind of just all up in the air. 

In some cases, those negotiated deals were higher than the 10% global tariff. So it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming months. 

Krishna: So let’s talk about tariff recovery. Just to clarify, what tariffs could someone seek a refund on?

Jenna: So you can request a duty refund on the IEEPA tariffs, which are those country specific tariffs that were announced as part of Liberation Day. It does not include the section 232 tariffs on aluminium or copper or steel, and it doesn’t include those 301 China tariffs. 

Now, in addition to that, it might be a good opportunity for you to look to make sure there are not any other potential errors in your customs declarations where you incorrectly overpaid or underpaid. 

With the IEEPA tariffs, you all of a sudden were in an environment where you had multiple tariffs that applied. You had your baseline IEEPA tariff. You had maybe an aluminium tariff or a steel tariff, and do those stack on top of each other? Does one take precedent over the other? 

So customs came out with an incredibly complex hierarchy of how to interpret the various tariffs that were out there at the time. So what we’re finding is as companies are looking to understand their IEEPA refunds, they’re taking a closer look at their data and realising that the stacking may have not been done correctly. So there’s an opportunity to reclaim those duties on top of the incorrectly or unlawfully applied IEEPA tariffs.

Krishna: As a business, how do I get my money back? 

Jenna: So historically, there are two mechanisms that you can request a refund about one of your customs entries. One of those is called a post summary correction, and that is for a customs declaration that has not yet liquidated. 

So you declare your goods at the border. They enter into the commerce of the United States. You have 314 days to determine that the information that you provided at the time of entry is true and correct. At 314 days, that entry is liquidated. 

At that point, you could file a protest saying you’re protesting the data and challenging the data as it was finalised on the import declaration. You have 180 days post liquidation to file a protest.

So when there was uncertainty around whether or not customs would be issuing refunds, there was a third mechanism that organisations sought, and that was filing individual complaints in the Court of International Trade to secure their standing and their challenge of these duties.  

Now we’re seeing less of that now, but there still might be an advantage to filing a lawsuit if your liquidation date is nearing or your ability to amend that entry is coming to a close.

But by and large, we’re seeing companies move away from that and are just waiting to go through the process. 

Krishna: What is that process? Billions of dollars have been collected under IEEPA that needs to be refunded. How do you do that?

Jenna: Do you do that one entry at a time as a post summary correction? That would be an administrative nightmare. Or even on the protest front, how do you group your entries in such a way that you can effectively argue refunds at mass scale? 

So the Court of International Trade has put pressure on customs to come up with a new solution, and they’ve developed an online platform that is currently about 40% to 80% complete, but that will allow companies to electronically file their entries. The platform will strip out all of the IEEPA tariffs that it can identify, recalculate, and then determine what that refund will be. The refund will be administered electronically, and hopefully life can continue, resume to normal.

But even with this online platform, I’m expecting that it’s still quite the effort, and there will likely be delays. Understanding exactly the amounts that are owed might take some time. 

One more thing about how you get your money back. There is an online platform that already exists. It’s called the Automated Commercial Environment. It’s run by Customs and Border Protection, and you need to get an account. Historically, you could request an account and get one in maybe a week, maybe two weeks. Word on the street is that it is taking a month or longer now because Customs is just so overloaded.

So prioritise getting an account if you don’t have one. There’s also a separate protest filer module that we recommend clients get as well. In the event they have to protest any entries, you might as well request it all at one time. So very important, if you want your money back, you need access to the ACE environment. 

Krishna: So Jenna, we’ve still got some tariffs in place. What do organisations need to do to make sure they’re paying the right amount?

Jenna: Yeah, so I know I’ve been talking a lot about 314 days and 180 days, so I’m going to give you another number to think about. There’s actually a 10-day grace period from the time you informally declare an entry to where you formally declare it. And within that 10 days, you can make edits to your entry without going through an administratively burdensome process. 

So I recommend companies going forward, at this point forward, looking at their entries within that 10-day period and trying to identify whether there are any issues to avoid having to make corrections further down the road.

Krishna: It sounds like there’s a lot more to go on the tariff story. So how do organisations mitigate changing tariffs in the future? 

Jenna: Yeah, so I don’t think we’re at the end of seeing change and disruption in the tariff space. So it’s all about softening the impact for your organisation. Number one, understand your exposure. Understand where your products are coming from, how they’re classified, what the potential duty rate is.

The second is looking at your supply chain. Companies scrambled a little bit to see if they could find alternate sourcing, but then more changes came. You don’t necessarily want to disrupt your whole supply chain when it’s just change after change. But it is good to understand where you could mitigate duty from one country. Maybe there’s a preferential trade agreement that would be available. 

The third is going back to your core compliance and understanding whether your product is classified correctly, the country of origin, and how it’s valued. And then something else organisations learned is building in language into your contracts about what it means for your commercial terms when we are in such a state of volatility and disruption. So looking at those things can help soften the impact of tariffs.

Krishna: So Jenna, our 15 minutes are nearly up. I’m going to end with the question we ask all of our guests. What’s the biggest takeaway for our listeners? 

Jenna: I think it’s important to remember that while refunds have been authorised, it’s going to likely be a slow process. So be patient, but definitely go through the process of seeking that money that is owed to you.

Get access to your data. If you don’t have an ACE account yet, reach out to US Customs and sign up for one. The second thing is look at your entries over the last 10 months and prioritise them based on liquidation dates. Seek refunds for those that are closer to liquidation. And the third thing is go back to your core compliance pillars. Look at your product classification, origin, and value so you can have confidence in what you’re paying in duties. 

Krishna: Well, that’s our 15 minutes up. Huge thanks for joining us today Jenna. Don’t forget you can catch all of our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. We’ll see you again for The Insight in 15.