Small Businesses Are Being Left Out of Tariff Refund Process, CBP Data Suggests

Data shared earlier this week by U.S. Customs and Border Protection suggests that the smallest and most vulnerable importers are being left behind in the early stages of the customs duty refund process.

After the Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which the president issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade ordered that the federal government reimburse U.S. importers for the tariffs collected under the law. CBP wrote in a court filing in early March that about 330,000 importers were eligible for a share of the $166 billion in tariff refunds. In a March 30 court filing, Brandon Lloyd, executive director of CBP trade programs, wrote that 26,664 importers had enrolled in the system, called Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE.

Data shared by CBP, as well as interviews with lawyers and trade advocates, show that the largest importers are the first to be reimbursed. This disparity reveals how small businesses continue to be negatively affected by Trump’s archaic tariff regime, even beyond the fact that they absorb the lion’s share of the levies.

The first 26,664 importers enrolled in the CBP automated system represent $120 billion in refunds, Lloyd wrote. This means that approximately 8% of all importers paid more than 72% of all IEEPA tariffs for an average refund amount of more than $4.5 million. And that leaves more than 300,000 importers to collect the remaining $46 billion in refunds, or about $150,000 per company.

This suggests, experts say, that small businesses are having difficulty accessing the CBP system and collecting what the government owes them.

“If you think about a small and medium-sized business, they don’t have a trade compliance department,” Eugene Laney, president and CEO of the American Association of Exporters and Importers, told TPM. “They don’t have supply chain managers.”

Laney praised CBP for its automated system, which his organization has championed, but said there are still a number of procedural steps required for a business to enroll in the system, which presents challenges for the most vulnerable businesses.

Even before SCOTUS reversed Trump’s tariffs, CBP had recently transitioned from issuing paper checks to an automated electronic payment system. Businesses need an account on the CBP Import and Export Portal to enroll in this electronic payment system, and must be enrolled in both to access the reimbursement portal.

CBP did not respond to TPM’s requests for business size data for the 26,664 registered refund participants.

The disparity in the size of businesses that have successfully sought relief for Trump’s illegal tariffs highlights the disproportionate harm these billions of dollars in trade taxes have caused to America’s small businesses – the very same businesses the president claimed to help.

“Small importers may not have the resources to coordinate with their customs brokers to set them up in CAPE, but they must do so to receive refunds,” Mark Ludwikowski, who chairs the international trade practice at law firm Clark Hill, told TPM. “They are often at a disadvantage, not because they lack legal rights, but because the reimbursement process requires a level of administrative capacity that many of them do not possess internally. »

Some small businesses may never attempt to collect duty refunds through the CBP system, Laney said. First, some have been forced to close their doors due to unsustainable business costs. Others may simply not find the effort worth it, either because the reimbursement wouldn’t be large enough or because it would simply be cheaper to take a tax loss on the fee, Laney said. Wall Street is also capitalizing on the refund system, with financial services companies offering financially distressed companies a portion of their refunds up front in exchange for the ability to collect the full refund amount later.

A year after Trump announced so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs that imposed heavy import taxes on businesses and consumers, small businesses continue to report that they must raise prices on their products, avoid expansion plans and, ultimately, lose revenue to continue operating. A report from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress released in late March found that the average small business spent $306,000 on Trump-imposed tariffs over the past year.

Trump has said his tariff system aims to improve U.S. manufacturing, which has been in decline for decades amid expanding global trade. But Trump’s tariffs have failed to create sustainable manufacturing jobs. The sector actually shed jobs between January 2025 and January 2026, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The simple cost of tariffs is not the only burden on small businesses. Laney explained that many companies have provided additional guarantees and taken out loans in order to meet rising import fees and stay afloat. Now, getting this money back is a necessity.

“The repayments would help them alleviate some of their liability,” Laney said, “but there is an urgency about it because a lot of these small and medium-sized businesses have borrowed so much money that if they don’t get the repayments on time, then they could go bankrupt.”