IEEPA at the Supreme Court: What Importers Should Be Doing Now

Most importers waiting on the Supreme Court's IEEPA ruling are hoping for one outcome: tariffs struck down, refunds flow back, life simplifies. On Episode 3 of the Trade and Tech podcast, two veterans of trade law and customs compliance identified that as the most expensive misconception to hold right now. Whichever way the Court rules, the work for trade teams gets harder, not easier. Refunds will not flow automatically. The administration has more tools if IEEPA is struck down. And for many importers, the bigger landmines are not in the headline tariff rate but in transshipment exposure, USMCA renegotiation, and the documentation no one has organized.

The guest was Cameron W. Roberts, an international trade and transportation lawyer with more than 35 years of practice, a licensed customs broker since 1989, and past president of the Foreign Trade Association and the Harbor Transportation Club. Gaia CEO Emil Stefanutti and chief strategy officer Tom Gould walked Roberts through the IEEPA case, the realistic outcome scenarios, and the practical steps importers should be taking before the Court rules.

The Legal Question Before the Court

Roberts framed the legal question precisely. Two cases are before the Court (Learning Resources v. Trump and a companion challenge), both targeting IEEPA-based tariffs. The constitutional issue turns on a single word: regulate.

The IEEPA tariffs at issue come in two categories:

• Fentanyl tariffs. Premised on a declared national emergency tied to fentanyl flows, applied to imports from Canada, Mexico, and China.

• Reciprocal tariffs. Premised on a national emergency framed around trade imbalance with virtually every trading partner.

The administration has used IEEPA broadly, from sweeping reciprocal regimes to narrow applications like the additional IEEPA layer on India tied to oil purchases from Russia. Roberts read the breadth as strategic. "He is trying to make this as punitive as possible if he doesn't get his way. He has been doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on IEEPA ever since the beginning, because the moment he did it, there was a legal challenge."

The deeper structural concern is separation of powers. Roberts pointed to Justice Kavanaugh's repeated focus on delegation as the most important thread of the oral arguments. Congress holds the constitutional authority to set tariffs. Through statute, Congress delegated some of that authority to the executive. If the Court reads "regulate" broadly enough to encompass tariff-setting on this scale, the executive gains a power structurally hard to claw back. "How would Congress ever get it back?" was, in Roberts' telling, the recurring question in the chamber. The answer requires passing a veto-proof law, which is a heavy lift. If "regulate" becomes synonymous with "tax" in this context, "you've given the executive pretty much unlimited authority to tax Americans" with the stroke of a pen.

What Is Damaging Importers More Than the Tariffs Themselves

Gould reframed the conversation from the legal question to what compliance teams are saying privately. "The biggest concern I'm hearing about is uncertainty. It's one thing for companies to absorb tariffs if they know about them enough in advance to build them into their business. The uncertainty really seems to be the bigger concern."

The pattern compliance teams keep describing is consistent. Tariffs are announced and imposed within hours or days. A company places an order, goods are produced, shipped, and arrive. Between order and arrival, the tariff rate has changed materially. "Because of the uncertainty, what's happening today is companies are building in costs they may not actually have to pay." That uncertainty bleeds into pricing, which bleeds into cost of living, which is showing up in political pressure on the administration to soften tariffs on some products. Which categories, when, and by how much, no one knows.

The administration's strongest legal argument runs parallel to the uncertainty problem. Roberts noted the government has consistently described IEEPA tariffs as foreign-policy instruments, not revenue instruments. Tariffs as a Greenland strategy. Tariffs in the Russia-Ukraine context. Tariffs as a pressure point on Venezuela. "If this is nothing more than a tool of foreign policy with an incidental revenue impact, then maybe the president can do it." A second pragmatic argument: the government has collected more than $130 billion in IEEPA duties, per Roberts' estimate. Refunding that is, in his words, "complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and is going to damage the treasury."

Three Scenarios and What Each Means for Trade Teams

Scenario A: Tariffs upheld

"I think that will embolden the president," Gould said. "We're going to see a far greater use going forward, a lot more targeted tariffs going after specific issues. I'm scared about that." The operational implication is clear. More frequent rate changes, more tariff layers stacked on top of base HTS rates, and more SKU-level analysis required to know what is owed at any given moment.

Scenario B: Tariffs struck down

"Everybody's going to be scrambling trying to figure out how do we get our money back," Gould said. He flagged a complication few importers have thought through. ACE, the system CBP uses to collect tariffs, accepts whatever is filed. If a broker files an entry with a miscalculation, the system collects the duty without flagging it. The government's position is that the importer carries the responsibility to file correctly. "If there are refunds, how much do you refund? Do you refund what was actually paid, or what was actually owed? How do you make that calculation?"

Scenario C: Middle ground

The most-discussed middle paths include finding IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional but ruling paid duties are not refundable, or finding the fentanyl tariffs constitutional and the reciprocal tariffs unconstitutional. Roberts was skeptical that the Court would write a ruling requiring case-by-case distinctions between IEEPA applications. "Courts tend to go in a more, it either is or is not constitutional sort of world because it's easier and simpler." Gould's bottom line on all three scenarios was consistent. "I don't see a Supreme Court ruling, regardless of direction, simplifying the process. We're going to see far greater complexity after the ruling, with a long tail before it settles."

What to do while you wait

Both Gould and Roberts converged on one piece of advice. Get the data ready. Sign up for a free ACE web portal account with CBP and pull entry-level reports showing entry numbers, dates, HTS codes, IEEPA duty paid, Section 232 duty paid, and liquidation status. Knowing duty exposure by SKU and having documentation organised to support either a protest or a lawsuit is the work that pays off no matter how the Court rules.

For importers wanting to protect refund eligibility, Gould outlined two paths. The traditional route is filing a protest after liquidation. Entries liquidate roughly ten months after release; from that date, an importer has a 180-day window. The second path is a CIT lawsuit filed proactively. Costco and others have already done this. Some companies run both tracks. Gaia's tariff classification governance guide covers the documentation framework to have in place before any ruling.

The Transshipment Risk Hidden Behind the Tariff Headlines

Roberts spent a substantial portion of the conversation on a risk most importers have not yet absorbed. A presidential proclamation imposes a 40% additional duty on top of assessed duties for goods deemed to have been transshipped to obscure country of origin. Per the proclamation, it is non-mitigatable. The administration has characterized transshipment as "circumvention and evasion," language that elevates enforcement risk above ordinary misclassification.

The exposure does not stop at the duty rate. Roberts walked through the chain of contractual liability:

• Cargo-owner indemnification: Cargo owners typically indemnify ocean carriers under bill-of-lading terms. If a vessel is delayed because of transshipment investigations, that delay can land on the merchant.

• Vessel seizure risk: A presidential proclamation cited prohibition-era statutes that authorise vessel seizure. Roberts described the prospect as extreme but not theoretical: "You tell me you're going to prosecute people under a prohibitionary statute where you're arresting and forfeiting vessels? That has a whole additional contractual implication."

• Demurrage: Roberts cited a forced-labour case where 202 ocean trade containers sat at Los Angeles and Long Beach for an extended period, accruing millions in demurrage. He described an active matter of his own where ten containers of honey have been stuck in New Jersey for a year and a half over a Chinese-origin dispute, with millions of dollars compounding while the importer fights CBP. This is not a theoretical outcome.

For compliance teams using Gaia's importer and exporter compliance platform, the headline duty rate is one input. The full exposure also includes transshipment enhancements, vessel-level contractual liability, demurrage, and abandonment risk if a SKU's economics flip overnight. As Roberts put it, "You've got to be playing chess, not checkers."

Conclusion

The Supreme Court ruling on IEEPA will not simplify the work. It will change the direction the complexity runs. Upholding the tariffs emboldens broader use. Striking them down triggers a refund scramble with no automatic mechanism and a $130 billion unwind problem. In every scenario, the importers best positioned are those with data ready now: entry-level reports pulled from ACE, liquidation dates tracked, documentation organized. The protest window is open. The data work is free. The chess game is already in motion.

See the Platform Built for This Environment

The compliance challenge Roberts and Gould described (classification layers stacking on base HTS rates, 40% transshipment enhancements on top of those, and refund eligibility that depends on documentation quality) is exactly what Gaia Dynamics is built to manage.

The platform connects directly to the official USITC HTS database and supports the structured classification and documentation work this episode made clear is non-optional:

• HTS classification with full audit trails documenting every decision for CBP review, including the tariff layer breakdown that determines refund eligibility

• Automatic flagging of PGA requirements, AD/CVD duties, and transshipment-risk indicators on high-exposure SKUs

• Importer and exporter compliance workflows that produce the structured documentation record Gould and Roberts identified as the prerequisite for any protest or CIT action

Explore Gaia Dynamics and see how the platform supports the data-readiness work this ruling will require.

Listen to the Full Episode

Listen to Episode 3 of the Trade and Tech podcast for the full discussion, including Cameron Roberts' deeper analysis of the USMCA renegotiation timeline, vessel arrest exposure under prohibition-era statutes, and the contractual obligations cargo owners may not realize they carry.

Frequently Asked Questions

If the Supreme Court strikes down the IEEPA tariffs, will my refund be automatic? 

No, a ruling of unconstitutionality does not trigger automatic CBP refund processing. The Court could leave open whether collected duties are refundable, and the administration has backup authorities. File protests after liquidation and consider CIT actions rather than waiting.

What is the 40% transshipment enhancement? 

A presidential proclamation imposes a 40% additional duty on goods transshipped to obscure country of origin. It is non-mitigatable. Importers with supply chains routing through countries adjacent to high-tariff origins should evaluate every high-value SKU for this exposure.

How long does an importer have to file a protest for IEEPA refund eligibility? 

The protest window is 180 days from liquidation, which generally occurs about ten months after CBP releases the goods. Track liquidation dates carefully for every affected entry.

What is the single most useful thing an importer can do before the ruling? 

Sign up for a free ACE web portal account with CBP and pull entry-level reports showing entry numbers, dates, HTS codes, duties paid by tariff layer, and liquidation status. This data is the prerequisite for any protest, CIT action, or supply-chain restructuring.