Most importers assume the tariff refund clock starts when the court rules.
It doesn’t. It starts the day CBP liquidates the entry, under 19 U.S.C. §1514. The court ruling is irrelevant to your protest window.
This is the detail that costs finance teams six figures.
Here’s what actually happens:
Duties hit the books. Finance flags the spend anomaly weeks later. Someone asks the customs broker. The broker says there’s nothing they can do. By the time anyone connects the duty hit to a recoverable claim, the 180-day protest window has already closed.
Not 180 days from when you noticed. From liquidation.
One controller reviewed year-end trade data in January and found $340K in duties on entries that had liquidated the previous spring. The protest window had closed in August. No one in finance had connected those two facts until it was past the point where an administrative protest was possible.
That’s not a customs failure. That’s a calendar problem disguised as a customs problem.
If you import goods and paid duties in 2025 or early 2026, here’s the one thing to do this week:
Pull your liquidation dates from ACE. Not your payment dates. Not your entry dates. Liquidation dates. Then count 180 days forward. If you’re inside that window on any entry, you have an administrative protest pathway still open. If you’re past it, a broker can’t help you, only an attorney filing in the Court of International Trade can.
Entries liquidated beyond 180 days have no administrative protest right. That’s not an opinion. That’s the statute.
Opscale runs protest filings, CIT litigation, and CAPE submissions in parallel, covering both the entries with open windows and the ones that require legal action to recover. One intake. No upfront cost.
Eligibility isn’t a self-serve check. Complete the intake at opscaleexchange.com and the Opscale team will call to walk through qualifying programs together.
ieepa #tradecompliance #importers #tariffrefunds