EL7.AI
Macro EconomyMedium•12 November 2026•
4 min read

Court Filing on $166 Billion in Tariffs Covers More Than 330,000 Importers

Key Facts

1Tariffs collected under the emergency law totaled about $166 billion across more than 330,000 importers and more than 53 million entries.
2The Court of International Trade certified the class on October 8, 2026.
3The class covers tariffs paid between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, excluding those who filed separate suits.
4On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the emergency law does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
5The government’s deadline to respond to the complaint is December 9, 2026, under the November 9 schedule.

Lawyers for Freestyle World asked the U.S. Court of International Trade to issue a proposed order for class-wide relief in a case over tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The move follows the court’s certification of an importer class on October 8, 2026, according to the court record. The request is part of a dispute over refunds of tariffs collected from more than 330,000 importers across more than 53 million customs entries, totaling about $166 billion, according to case background cited by Troutman Pepper Locke. Those figures describe the scale of collections and the affected class; they are not an amount the court ordered paid in the November filing. The filing does not establish that refunds have been ordered or paid to importers.

The court’s definition covers registered importers that paid tariffs under the challenged customs orders between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, while excluding any entity that filed a separate suit seeking refunds of emergency tariffs, according to the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling. These limits tie class eligibility to registered-importer status and the period specified in the ruling. The class counsel’s website explains that the relevant company or person must be listed as the registered importer on the customs entries. As a result, U.S. buyers or consumers who bore the cost of the tariffs without being the registered importer are not included in the class under this definition. The court appointed Freestyle World as class representative and named lawyers from Barnes, Richardson & Colburn and Levin, Capriser as class counsel.

The dispute stems from the Supreme Court’s February 20, 2026, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, according to Troutman Pepper Locke. The refund request concerns tariffs collected under that law. But the Supreme Court ruling did not itself establish administrative procedures for returning the money, according to the legal source. In response to that procedural gap, U.S. Customs and Border Protection developed the CAPE tool to process refund claims. The tool allows, according to the agency’s Federal Register notice, summaries of multiple customs entries for the same importer to be processed in a single claim, resulting in one refund payment instead of multiple transactions.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that reviewing entries one by one could not process the volume and value of the amounts covered by a Court of International Trade order in a timely or efficient manner, prompting it to develop CAPE. The Federal Register notice estimated about 330,000 respondents for the refund information collection, a figure that reflects the scope of the planned administrative tool. The court stayed implementation of the refund order only to the extent that immediate compliance would be required, according to the agency’s statement. The agency added that the court is closely monitoring the tool’s development and may lift the stay at any time. The timing of the refund process therefore depends on the tool’s progress and the court’s oversight, as well as its decision on the class-wide request.

The case is moving toward its next procedural step after class certification, with the court’s November 9, 2026, schedule setting a December 9 deadline for the government to respond to the complaint, according to a summary of the schedule by Lieberman’s office. Setting a response date does not mean a decision has been issued on the relief request or that payments have begun. The proposed request remains before the court while Customs works to complete its refund-processing tool and remains subject to the court’s review. Whether a particular importer is covered also depends on whether it falls within the class definition and its entries fall within the court-defined period, not simply on whether it bore the cost of the tariffs. The government’s response in December is the next milestone set out in the case schedule.