Ford told analysts this morning that it booked a $1.3 billion one-time benefit for IEEPA tariffs it paid between March 2025 and February 2026 (Ford Q1 2026 call, April 29, 2026). A plant that bought a German switchgear lineup last November and paid a 15% “tariff surcharge” line will book nothing, because the refund goes to whoever signed the entry summary, and on most equipment POs that is the vendor’s broker. CBP’s own declaration to the Court of International Trade puts the pool at about $166 billion across 53 million entries and 330,000 importers, and the regulation that pays it out, 19 CFR 24.36, does not have a line for the customer who funded the duty (Skadden, March 24, 2026; 19 CFR 24.36). The Open Factory Tariff Exposure Calculator flags every IEEPA chapter 99 line on a 2025 entry as refundable to the importer of record, with the CAPE cutoff dates. This piece covers the pool, the payment chain, the earnings calls, a $2M switchgear order line by line, the liquidation clocks and, behind the wall, the allocation clause, the protest deadlines and the bonded warehouse and FTZ math for a 2026 to 2027 order.
What CBP Collected and What It Owes
Source: Treasury Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 4 via Open Factory Tariff Exposure Calculator
Gross customs duties ran $6.2 billion to $7.9 billion a month through fiscal 2024, crossed $16 billion in April 2025, peaked at $33.1 billion in October 2025 and were still $24.0 billion in March 2026, the first full month after the ruling (Treasury MTS Table 4; CSV in data/customs-duties-monthly.csv). March has not fallen back because the 10% Section 122 surcharge took over on February 24 and Section 232 never stopped; the stack by HTS line lives in Tariffs: The Actual Schedule and is not repeated here.
The refundable slice is the IEEPA share. CBP’s Executive Director for Trade Programs told Judge Eaton on March 4 that 71,647,732 entries were filed from February 2025 to February 2026 against 39,134,522 the year before, that CBP was still liquidating with IEEPA duties, and that it had issued no refunds (Declaration of Brandon Lord, Atmus Filtration v. United States, ECF 19). The same day the court ordered CBP “to liquidate those entries without regard to the IEEPA duties” and to reliquidate “any liquidated entries for which liquidation is not final,” for every importer, not only the 2,500 who had sued (Order, ECF 21, March 4, 2026). CAPE, the refund module in ACE, went live on April 20 (CSMS 68396594).
The Buyer Is Not in the Payment Chain
CBP pays the importer of record or the party it names on Form 4811, and a plant that bought DDP was neither. The regulation says a refund “shall be prepared in the name of the person to whom the refund is due,” and CBP’s April 13 message narrows the filer to “the IOR associated with the entry summaries or … the broker that filed the entry summaries” (CSMS 68340863). Six ways a plant bought imported gear in 2025, and who holds the money in each; the Public Bid-Tab Price Book records the Incoterm on every award for this reason.
Source: Open Factory Tariff Exposure Calculator (compiled from 19 CFR 24.36, CBP CSMS 68340863, CIT 26-01150, Skadden; as of April 2026)
CSV: data/refund-entitlement.csv
Six structures, and in four the refund lands with someone other than the party that funded the duty: the OEM on a DDP quote, the distributor on a stocked panel, the carrier on a consignee’s shipment, the OEM again on US stock sold at a raised list price. Only the buyer who entered through its own broker files its own CAPE Declaration. Skadden’s February 20 note said it plainly: “the applicable regulations (19 C.F.R. § 24.36) provide that refunds are paid to the importer of record,” and “more likely, however, contracts will allocate responsibility for tariffs without clarifying which party is entitled to the benefit of any refunds or reductions” (Skadden, February 20, 2026). The firm’s advice, which is the allocation language in our subtitle, was to “proactively discuss responsibility for seeking refunds and the ultimate allocation of those refunds with their counterparties, before a dispute arises.”
The carriers moved first. FedEx Corporation and FedEx Logistics sued at the CIT on February 23, three days after the ruling, pleading that they “transport imports on behalf of their customers” and “are responsible for paying these tariffs,” and asking for “a full refund from Defendants of all IEEPA duties Plaintiffs have paid” (FedEx v. United States, CIT 26-01150, complaint). Costco filed in November (CIT 25-00316). In January the CIT revised its filing forms to make plaintiffs disclose third-party financing, anticipating suits where “the ultimate economic benefit of the remedy would flow to a party other than the plaintiff.” The switchgear buyer is that other party, and the OEM Disclosure Scorecard now records whether an OEM has said publicly what it will do with refunds on surcharged orders.
What the Earnings Calls Admit
The OEMs that surcharged you have told investors the refund is theirs to recognize, and none of the four we read has said it will pass it back. Ford’s CFO: “in Q1, we recognized a $1.3 billion benefit related to [IEEPA] tariffs … related to [IEEPA] tariffs paid between March 2025 and February 2026,” booked $700 million to Ford Blue and $500 million to Ford Pro (Ford, April 29, 2026). Generac, an hour earlier, said its raised margin guidance “excludes the future impact of any potential tariff recovery as a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling,” and its CFO added that the company assumes the removal of IEEPA duties “will get fully offset by a new tariff framework made up of incremental section 122, 232 and 301 tariffs” (Generac, April 29, 2026). Caterpillar put its net incremental tariff cost at $1.7 billion for 2025 and guided $2.6 billion for 2026 before the ruling (Caterpillar, January 29, 2026); Eaton’s CEO said on February 3 that “tariffs in 2025 was not part of the plan. We mastered that pretty well,” the polite form of priced through (Eaton, February 3, 2026).
The buyer’s side of the same transactions is a surcharge line, and surcharges were rarely the duty. Japanese machine-tool builders added a flat 10% surcharge to US quotes in April 2025, before any entry had been made at the new rate (Seisanzai Japan, April 2025); Rockwell’s 250 Basis Points walked through how that pass-through lands in a PLC quote in December, and Copper at $6.77 did it for a 200-amp panel in February. A surcharge is a price term; a duty is a deposit with CBP; only the deposit comes back, and to the depositor. Quote Check separates the two on any 2025 quote, and Reading a Switchgear Quote shows where the line hides.
A $2M Switchgear Order, Line by Line
On a $2 million German MV lineup entered in November 2025, the refund pot is $308,856 and the PO most buyers signed gives them $0 of it. The arithmetic: HTS 8537.20.00 carries a 2.7% column 1 rate, and the EU order of July 31, 2025 set the IEEPA rate so that column 1 plus IEEPA equals 15%, so the IEEPA duty was 12.3% of customs value (EO 14326, 90 FR 37963, sec. 2(c); HTS 8537.20.00). With $1.8 million of the $2 million PO as entered value (freight and commissioning invoiced separately), the vendor’s broker deposited $221,400 of IEEPA duty. The vendor billed a flat 15% surcharge on the PO, $300,000. CBP will refund the $221,400 with interest under 19 CFR 24.36 at the corporate overpayment rate, 6% for the first quarter of 2026 (FR Doc 2026-01175), which over eight months from deposit to liquidation is $8,856. Full computation in data/switchgear-2m-example.csv.
Source: Open Factory Tariff Exposure Calculator
Four contracts, four splits: with no refund clause the vendor keeps $308,856, the $78,600 surcharge excess plus the $230,256 CBP sends back; with a surcharge equal to the duty and no clause, $230,256; with a FAR 52.229-3 style clause the price drops by the $221,400 “after-relieved” duty and the vendor keeps $87,456; with the clause behind the wall the buyer recovers all $308,856. The federal clause is the one public model: FAR 52.229-3(d) says “the contract price shall be decreased by the amount of any after-relieved Federal tax,” a term that covers a duty the contractor “obtains a refund or drawback” of through “judicial … action taking effect after the contract date” (FAR 52.229-3). The private forms have nothing like it: AIA A201-2017 §3.6 makes the contractor pay taxes “legally enacted” when bids are received and is silent on refunds, and ConsensusDocs 200 allocates the tax, not the recovery (AIA A201; ConsensusDocs 200). A PO on either form, or on the vendor’s paper, has no refund provision unless someone typed one in; the Public Bid-Tab Price Book records which form each public award used.
The Clocks Started at Liquidation, Not at the Ruling
Judge Eaton’s order reaches only entries that are “not final,” and finality is counted from liquidation, which for a March 2025 entry has already happened. Entries liquidate about 314 days after entry and are deemed liquidated at one year (19 USC 1504; Skadden, March 24, 2026). CBP may reliquidate on its own within 90 days of liquidation (19 USC 1501); the importer may protest within 180 days (19 USC 1514); and CAPE Phase 1 accepts a liquidated entry only up to 80 days after liquidation, then sets unliquidated entries to liquidate 45 days after the declaration is accepted, with the money “generally issued within 60 - 90 days” (CSMS 68340863). The Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule carries those three marks on every 2025 PO line.
Source: Open Factory Tariff Exposure Calculator (CIT dockets via CourtListener, Federal Register, CBP CSMS, Skadden)
CSV: data/litigation-timeline.csv
Read the table against an order book: a lineup entered in March 2025 liquidated around January 2026, left the CAPE window in early April and can be protested only until about July 2026; a November 2025 entry stays in CAPE to December. Two more dates sit on top. The government’s deadline to appeal the March 4 order runs to early May, and an appeal “could lead to a stay of Judge Eaton’s order” (Skadden). And the 10% Section 122 surcharge that replaced IEEPA on February 24 is statutorily limited to 150 days, so it lapses at 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2026 unless Congress extends it, with Section 232 goods and USMCA goods already exempt (Proclamation 11012, 91 FR 9339). USTR opened 60 Section 301 investigations on March 12 into economies without a forced-labor import ban, which is the candidate replacement (91 FR 12884); the Factory Automation Roadmap carries the docket dates for the machinery lines.
What to Do Monday
Send every vendor that billed you a tariff surcharge in 2025 a letter asking for three things: the entry summary numbers, confirmation that it has filed or will file a CAPE Declaration, and its position on passing the refund through. The letter costs nothing and starts the record for the “quasi-contractual claims” over unjust enrichment that follow if the vendor keeps the money. Ask for the Incoterm and importer of record on every open PO the same day; if you were the importer, confirm your ACE Portal account has refund bank details on file, because CBP will not transmit without them (CSMS 68315804). Run each 2025 entry through the Tariff Exposure Calculator to split the IEEPA line from the Section 232 and 301 duties that stay, and write the HTS line and origin into every new RFQ as How to Write an RFQ for Capital Equipment lays out.
Second, do not sign a 2026 PO with the 2025 language: vendors are quoting the Section 122 surcharge into prices today, and if it ends early that is a second refund with the same problem. The Lead-Time Monitor has MV switchgear at 44 to 54 weeks and a 2,500 kVA pad-mount at 40 to 65, so everything ordered this quarter enters after July 24 under whatever replaces the surcharge; the entry date sets the duty, which makes the slot deposits buyers are paying tariff bets too. Behind the paywall: the refund allocation clause we would not sign a capital-equipment PO without, in full, the protest and reconciliation steps with the day counts for a March 2025 and a November 2025 entry, and the bonded warehouse and FTZ arithmetic for a $180,000 Section 122 bill on a June 2026 delivery, mapped to the Tariff Exposure Calculator’s citation fields.