The CIT and CAFC Tariff Litigation Tracker - Which Cases Could Refund Your Duties (or Raise Them)

Earlier this year, Gaia Dynamics analyzed close to 30,000 US import entries covering almost 270,000 line items and found discrepancies in roughly one third of them, with the total value of misalignment, recoverable overpayments and underpayment exposure combined, exceeding $64 million. The pending docket at the Court of International Trade and the Federal Circuit is about to pull a very large population of those same entries back into active review.

Some of those cases will send money back to importers, and others will decide how much you owe going forward. In both directions, the deadline for preserving your position is an administrative one that runs on your liquidation dates, and it does not wait for the courts.

Why Importers Need to Track Trade Court Litigation

CIT and CAFC jurisdiction over tariff disputes

The US Court of International Trade (CIT) holds exclusive jurisdiction over civil actions arising out of US customs and international trade laws, including challenges to duty assessments, classification and valuation decisions, antidumping and countervailing duty determinations, and the legality of tariff programs themselves. Appeals go to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), and from there to the Supreme Court only by petition for certiorari.

Trade cases consequently move in a pattern importers can learn to read. A CIT panel rules, the government appeals, the Federal Circuit stays the judgment while it considers the appeal, and CBP keeps collecting throughout the pause, sometimes for months after a court has held the tariff unlawful.

How a single case can refund (or raise) billions of dollars

In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, decided February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Roughly 330,000 importers had paid or deposited an estimated $166 billion in IEEPA duties across more than 53 million entries, and industry estimates put total potential refunds as high as $175 billion.

The reverse direction moves just as fast. When the Section 122 surcharge lapsed on July 24, 2026, a USTR Section 301 action took effect the same day under a two-tier structure covering roughly 60 economies, or about 99.4% of US imports by value. One decision can hand back billions, and the replacement authority can reimpose the cost within hours.

Why protective protests are now table stakes

A protest under Section 514 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1514) must be filed within 180 days of liquidation, and there are no extensions. A timely protest preserves your claim on that entry regardless of how the appeal resolves, which is the whole point of filing one before the law is settled.

The economics are lopsided. Filing through your existing broker is close to an administrative task; missing the window and litigating the same claim at the CIT under 28 U.S.C. 1581(i) has been estimated at $15,000 to $25,000 per matter, plus 12 to 24 months.

The IEEPA Cases After Learning Resources v. Trump

The February 20, 2026 SCOTUS ruling

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, resting on the principle that the Constitution vests the power to lay and collect taxes, tariffs included, in Congress, and that any presidential tariff authority therefore requires a clear congressional delegation. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties, and the Court found that silence dispositive.

The ruling reached both categories of IEEPA tariffs: the targeted "fentanyl" tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and the broader "reciprocal" tariffs applied to dozens of countries. What it did not do was create an automatic refund mechanism, which is where the five months since have been spent.

V.O.S. Selections and CAPE refunds

On March 2, 2026, the Federal Circuit denied the government a further stay and remanded V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump (No. 25-1812) to the CIT to oversee the refund process. CBP built the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) tool inside the ACE Portal to handle claims at volume, launching Phase 1 on April 20, 2026 for certain unliquidated entries and entries liquidated within 80 days of submission, and Phase 2 on June 29, 2026.

CBP has already refunded approximately $85 billion in IEEPA duties on unliquidated and nonfinal entries. The government has not accepted the scope of the relief, though. On June 3 it filed notices of appeal in V.O.S. Selections, Euro-Notions, AGS Company and Grant & Bowman, and moved to consolidate them, and it is expected to argue that the CIT's refund orders amount to impermissible universal injunctions extending relief to importers who never filed protective actions.

If that argument succeeds, the availability of a refund starts to depend on whether an importer has a preserved claim on the specific entry.

Open question: refunds for finally liquidated entries

Finally liquidated entries are the hardest category, covering roughly $11.4 billion, or about 7% of total IEEPA tariff revenue. On July 17, 2026, CIT Senior Judge Richard Eaton ordered CBP to reliquidate, without regard to IEEPA duties, any and all of the plaintiffs' entries liquidated for more than 80 days on which estimated deposits had been made under IEEPA.

The order runs to parties in the roughly 3,700 pending IEEPA cases at the CIT, and CAPE Phase 3 is being built to process those claims. Importers outside that group are relying on a protest record, a class motion, or the outcome of the government's appeal.

The Section 122 Cases

CIT’s May 7 ruling against Section 122

On May 7, 2026, a divided CIT panel held 2-1 that the 10% temporary import surcharge imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 exceeded the President's statutory authority, finding that the February 20, 2026 proclamation had not satisfied the statute's requirements. Section 122 is a balance-of-payments provision with tight built-in limits, including a 150-day maximum duration absent congressional extension.

CAFC’s May 12 stay

Five days later, on May 12, 2026, the Federal Circuit issued an administrative stay suspending the CIT's judgment and injunction while it considered the government's motion for a longer stay pending appeal. The CIT denied the government's own stay motion on May 20, and on June 11 the Federal Circuit granted a stay of the injunction, allowing CBP to keep collecting Section 122 duties. Importers went on paying the surcharge for another six weeks after that.

Appellate timeline and probable outcomes

The surcharge itself expired by operation of law at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026, when the 150-day clock ran out and Congress did not extend it. The appeal remains live, because the money collected between February 24 and July 24 is still in dispute, and the Federal Circuit's eventual holding on whether the proclamation met the statute's conditions determines whether that population of entries becomes refundable.

If you imported during that window, watch your liquidation dates rather than the expiration date. Liquidations from the Section 122 period will run through the second half of 2026 and into 2027, and each one starts its own 180-day protest clock.

Section 301 Procedural Challenges

Ongoing challenges to USTR’s procedural compliance

Section 301 actions are reviewable at the CIT under Administrative Procedure Act standards, so challenges to them typically attack USTR's process rather than its trade policy judgment. In HMTX Industries, for example, the CIT found that USTR had not adequately responded to comments critical of extending tariffs to additional Chinese imports, then gave the agency an opportunity to supply further justification instead of vacating the tariffs. Calibrate expectations against that remedy, since procedural wins in Section 301 cases have historically produced remands and better-reasoned agency explanations more often than money back.

Anticipated forced labor 301 litigation

USTR initiated 60 Section 301 investigations on March 12, 2026 into various economies' failure to impose and effectively enforce prohibitions on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, made findings and proposed action in June, and took action in July. The record includes a public hearing with testimony from over 100 witnesses and over 1600 comments.

The likely challenge is a timing argument: whether the accelerated schedule for 60 simultaneous investigations left USTR enough room to genuinely respond to significant comments, as Section 304(b)(1)(A) of the Trade Act contemplates. Since this action took over from the Section 122 surcharge on the day it lapsed, its durability in court will do more to set 2027 duty rates than any other case on this list.

Carbon and emissions-based tariff legal questions

There is no US federal carbon border adjustment in force, so there is nothing to litigate yet, and the sequencing question is what to watch. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its definitive regime on January 1, 2026, with authorization and reporting obligations already active and financial obligations beginning in September 2027.

For US importers, the implication from Learning Resources is that any tariff keyed to embedded emissions would need an explicit statutory delegation from Congress, and that requirement is why border carbon adjustment proposals have drawn renewed legislative attention this year.

USMCA and Origin Determination Cases

Substantial transformation disputes in the current docket

Substantial transformation, the test asking whether processing in a country produced a new and different article of commerce with a distinct name, character or use, is carrying more weight in the current docket than it has in years. Recent CIT decisions applying the standard under the Trade Agreements Act have kept the focus on whether assembly operations change the essential character of the imported components or merely combine them. Origin claims resting on assembly location alone are the ones most exposed on audit.

Country-of-origin redetermination cases

The United States declined on July 1, 2026 to renew USMCA for a further 16-year term, moving the agreement into annual reviews while leaving it in force. 

Redetermination cases follow a familiar shape: CBP reaches a different origin conclusion than the importer did, duties are reassessed across a population of past entries, and the dispute reaches the CIT after a protest is denied. Preferential USMCA eligibility and non-preferential origin are separate questions, and losing the second can be expensive even when the first was claimed correctly.

Steel and aluminum derivative scope challenges

Section 232 coverage of derivative products keeps expanding, and the June 2026 proclamation on steel, aluminum and copper introduced precise two-line reporting requirements for Canadian and Mexican derivatives. Derivative scope is where documentation quality converts directly into duty exposure, since importers must establish where the metal was melted and cast and the value of the metal content within the finished good, and where that proof is missing the tariff applies to the entire value of the product. Scope challenges here turn on whether a specific article falls inside an inclusion list, so track them by product line and not in the aggregate.

AD/CVD Scope and Methodology Cases

Solar III and IV scope disputes

The Solar IV proceedings on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and modules from India, Indonesia and Laos produced preliminary CVD determinations on February 24, 2026 and preliminary AD determinations on April 23, 2026, with preliminary dumping margins of 123.04% for India, 35.17% for Indonesia and 22.46% for Laos. Final Commerce determinations for India and Indonesia were scheduled for July 13, 2026, with Laos expected on or around September 9, 2026.

Commerce also found that critical circumstances existed for several producers, which allows retroactive duty application to entries made before the preliminary determination. For importers, that finding is the one that reaches backward into entries already on the water.

The Solar III orders covering Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have been in place long enough to reach administrative review and scope ruling stages, which is where most importer disputes actually surface. Both proceedings keep returning to the same question: whether cells or wafers produced in a third country pull a finished module inside or outside the order.

Battery anode material scope challenges

The active anode material proceedings, initiated on petitions filed in December 2024, cover graphite with a minimum 90% carbon purity, and reach anode-grade material entered in a mixture with silicon-based active materials, in a compound, in a battery, as a component of anode slurry, or in a battery subassembly such as an electrode. Commerce issued final AD and CVD determinations in early 2026. Scope language that follows a material into downstream assemblies generates scope ruling requests for years, because the classification question ("is this a battery?") and the scope question ("does this contain covered anode material?") produce different answers on the same entry.

Methodology challenges (cost test, particular market situation)

Particular market situation (PMS) findings let Commerce adjust its cost calculations where circumstances distort the cost of production, and those adjustments have been repeatedly challenged at the CIT and the Federal Circuit. In Nexteel v. United States, the Federal Circuit held that Commerce's finding of a PMS in Korea was not supported by substantial evidence.

Commerce published a final PMS regulation on March 25, 2024 in response to those decisions, which is generally expected to make PMS findings more frequent and harder to overturn. Methodology cases rarely make headlines, and they move rates for entire orders when they land.

How to File Protests Tied to Pending Litigation

The 180-day window

The clock runs 180 days from the date of liquidation, which is a different date from entry, from payment, and from any court ruling. Protests are generally filed on CBP Form 19, though no statute requires that form, and any signed document from an interested party that can be construed as contesting a CBP decision should be treated as a protest. A broker holding a valid power of attorney can file on behalf of the importer of record, and supporting documentation typically includes the entry summary, the commercial invoice, proof of payment, and a written legal basis.

Protest language that preserves your position

The purpose of a protective protest is to keep an entry open, so the drafting should be specific about the decision being contested and expansive about the grounds. A protest tied to pending litigation generally identifies the entry and liquidation date, states the specific CBP decision at issue, cites the statutory basis being challenged, references the pending case by name and docket number, and requests suspension of the protest pending final resolution of that case.

This is also the point where the audit question and the refund question meet. Before submitting claims across a population of entries, it is worth knowing what else is in that population, since a refund request opens the same entries to CBP review, and Gaia Dynamics’ Tariff Audit feature was built to surface classification, valuation and duty discrepancies across historical entry data before you invite that review.

Coordinating with industry-wide protests

Trade associations and counsel handling multi-party actions frequently coordinate protest language so that claims across many importers rest on identical grounds, which strengthens the record and simplifies suspension. If your industry has an active case at the CIT, ask counsel whether template language already exists before drafting your own.

Class treatment is a separate mechanism from protests, and it does not remove the value of filing. A protest you control is not contingent on someone else's certification motion succeeding.

FAQ

How do I know if my entries are tied to a pending case?

Match your entry data against the specific authority under which duties were assessed, then against the liquidation status of each entry. IEEPA, Section 122, Section 301 and Section 232 duties each sit in a different litigation posture, and within IEEPA the relevant split is between unliquidated, recently liquidated and finally liquidated entries. Your ACE data and entry summaries will tell you which buckets you are in.

Do I need to be a party to the case to receive a refund?

Not necessarily, and this is the live question. CBP's CAPE process has issued refunds broadly on unliquidated and nonfinal entries, while the July 17, 2026 reliquidation order for finally liquidated entries runs specifically to plaintiffs in the pending CIT cases. The government's appeal argues that relief should not extend to importers who never filed protective actions, which is the strongest available argument for filing one.

What's the cost of filing a protective protest?

Filing through a broker who already holds your power of attorney is largely an administrative cost, with no CBP filing fee for a protest. Compare that against the alternative: litigating the same claim at the CIT after the window closes has been estimated at $15,000 to $25,000 per matter plus 12 to 24 months.

How long does a CIT decision take to flow through to refunds?

Longer than the decision date suggests. The Section 122 sequence ran from a May 7, 2026 CIT ruling to a May 12 administrative stay to a June 11 stay pending appeal, with collections continuing throughout. On the IEEPA side, where refunds are actually moving, CBP has been issuing payment within 60 to 90 days of an accepted CAPE declaration, but that came roughly two months after the Supreme Court ruled and only after the Federal Circuit remanded the case for the CIT to supervise the process.

Can a CIT decision be reversed and force me to pay back a refund?

Yes in principle, which is why the government's pending appeal of the universal refund orders matters even to importers who have already been paid. A refund issued under an order that is later narrowed on appeal can be revisited, and your practical protection is a well-documented, independently supportable claim on each entry that stands on its own if the breadth of that order changes.

Duty recovery and duty exposure are being decided in the same courtrooms, on the same entries, this year. If you want to know what your historical entry data actually says before CBP looks at it, start with a Tariff Audit.