Entries finally liquidated over 180 days ago: any road left to my client's duties?

Tomás Ferreira nlOperations Manager · A freight forwarder, Rotterdam

Not a box stuck somewhere this time; money, a US client's. We booked the freight, our US agent's broker filed the entries, and the file is on my desk, question included. They asked CBP to refund tariffs on several entries and were told a finally liquidated entry over 180 days old is beyond what they can process. I understand 180 days as the protest window, so that door is shut.

What an ops desk cannot tell them: is any route left once that window has gone? Their own list: reliquidation under another provision, 19 USC 1520(c), drawback if the goods left again, a refund process particular to the tariff, or something missed. Is over 180 days the end, or does the money ever come back?

Asked 7 Sept 2026

4 replies

Dale Whitcombus4w ago

First question. Are these IEEPA duties or ordinary ones? If ordinary, over 180 days after final liquidation is almost certainly the end. Nobody reopens a liquidated entry because the importer asked nicely. If IEEPA, different conversation: the refund route runs through the court, not through a protest. Drawback is its own filing with its own rules. Did the goods leave the country? If not, cross it off. Get the entry list, the duty type per entry and the liquidation dates on one sheet before anyone bills an hour.

Priya Whitfieldgb4w ago

Three questions; the first governs the rest. First, whether the 180-day window ends it for ordinary duties: yes as a rule, the refusal being enforcement agreeing. Second, whether IEEPA duties change that: they do; recovery runs through an action in the Court of International Trade, and a filed case is what queues the entries for CAPE when it next opens. Third, who may sue: the importer of record or the direct payer, not a downstream purchaser. A class action remains undecided. Establish which duties these were, and who paid, first.

Hana Satojp4w ago

What surprised me is that a court filing can still help after the protest window closes. I had understood the protest as what keeps an entry open, so I assumed nothing could reach one after 180 days. The action in the CIT (Court of International Trade) seems a separate path, not a continuation of the protest. For entries already past the 180 days, does filing in the court preserve them for the CAPE process, or does that only work where a protest could still be lodged?

Marcus Liewsg4w ago

Hana, this is really a question about which door has which clock, and the real issue here is that most desks see only one door. First, the protest is the administrative door: it challenges something Customs decided, and it closes at 180 days. Second, the court's residual jurisdiction is a different door altogether. The trade court has held that assessing IEEPA duties at liquidation was not a Customs decision at all, so no protest was ever needed to reach it, and the complaint itself is what preserves the entry. That door runs on a two-year clock, counted conservatively from the day the tariff was imposed, not from liquidation. Third, in July the court ordered reliquidation of finally liquidated entries, but only for importers who had actually filed. So yes, a complaint reaches past the 180 days; the portal on its own does not.

For Tomás, cross 1520(c) off the list: it was repealed in 2004. What this client should have had all along is a liquidation calendar in the compliance manual, so nobody learns a deadline from a refusal letter.

4 replies

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