On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs imposed under the Trump administration, ruling them unconstitutional. The decision opened the door to one of the largest business refund programs in U.S. history — up to $175 billion in tariff payments are now potentially refundable, and as of April 21, 2026, the federal CAPE portal is officially open for claims.
Here is the problem: the refund is not automatic.
To collect, businesses must actively file through the CBP’s ACE portal, prepare a CAPE Declaration listing every relevant entry number, tariff code, and duty amount in a formatted CSV file, and do it within a strict 80-day window. Miss the window and your only options are formal protests or litigation — a process that can take years.
Up to 330,000 U.S. companies are eligible. Most of them will leave money on the table.
Why Most Businesses Will Struggle
The refund process was designed for customs attorneys and licensed brokers — not for the operations teams, accountants, and business owners who actually run the companies that paid these tariffs. According to Fortune, 42% of small businesses cite tariff costs as a primary financial concern, yet the very companies that need this money the most are the least equipped to navigate the process.
The challenge is not just understanding the rules. It is the data problem. To file a complete and accurate CAPE Declaration, businesses need to pull years of import records, cross-reference invoice data, match entry numbers to tariff classification codes, calculate duty amounts paid, and format all of it correctly before submission. One formatting error can get your claim rejected.
For a business processing hundreds or thousands of import transactions, doing this manually is not just time-consuming — it is a liability. Human error on a claim of this size is expensive.
This Is Exactly the Problem AI Agents Were Built to Solve
At NebularaTech, we build intelligent automation workflows that handle exactly this kind of data-intensive, high-stakes process. An AI agent built for tariff refund recovery works like this:
The agent connects to your accounting system, ERP, or document storage and ingests your full invoice and transaction history. It identifies every import transaction that falls within the eligible IEEPA tariff categories, cross-references entry numbers against CBP records, calculates the total duty paid per entry, flags any records with missing or inconsistent data for human review, and outputs a properly formatted CAPE Declaration CSV file ready for submission through the ACE portal.
What would take your team weeks of manual work, the agent completes in hours — with greater accuracy and a full audit trail.
Beyond the Refund: What Intelligent Automation Does for Your Business
The tariff refund opportunity is a window into a much larger conversation. If your business is still relying on manual processes to manage invoices, payroll, vendor payments, or compliance documentation, you are carrying an operational cost that compounds every single day.
The businesses that will grow fastest over the next five years are not the ones with the largest teams. They are the ones that have automated the work that does not need a human — freeing their people to focus on the work that does.
NebularaTech builds AI agent workflows that remove manual bottlenecks across your entire operation. Invoice processing and three-way matching. Payroll data validation and exception handling. Vendor onboarding and contract review. Compliance documentation and audit preparation. These are not futuristic capabilities. They are deployable today, and they deliver measurable ROI within the first quarter.
The Window Is Open Right Now
The CAPE portal launched this week. Phase 1 covers entries within the last 80 days, and refunds are expected to be paid within 60 to 90 days of approval. For businesses that act now, this is real money back in your account before the summer.
But beyond the refund, this moment is an opportunity to take an honest look at how much manual process is still running through your organization — and what it is actually costing you.
If you are an importer and want to know whether you are eligible and how much you may be owed, we will run a free assessment. If you want to understand what an AI automation workflow could look like for your business more broadly, we are ready to show you.
Call us at (407) 279-0728 or fill out our contact form. No commitment, no pressure — just a straight conversation about what is possible.